7 ms·

It's not just a case of dividing performance numbers by price - obviously the Apple machine is better built. The real question is: Is it built a $1000 dollars b

by bArray 6y ago

It's not just a case of dividing performance numbers by price - obviously the Apple machine is better built. The real question is: Is it built a $1000 dollars better and built well enough to overcome the fact it's slower (in these tests)? There are some pretty legitimate reasons to come away from Apple products now in my opinion, including some very competitive hardware at lower prices. I've been quite a happy Linux user for a long time now.

saagarjha 6y ago
Not only are they better built, they also run macOS.
- tracer4201 6y ago
  I upgraded from a 2015 MacBook Pro to a 2019 16”. I heard there were tons of keyboard issues in the years in between. Aside from that, I stick with MacBooks because of the solid quality and macOS. I can’t work on Windows. I’ve tried again and again. I do have a windows machine for gaming, but programming and design work, the short cuts, fluidity, and general experience working in iTerm2 with multiple desktops is top notch. There’s nothing really to “fix” or make better. All my software on macOS is also top quality. I don’t know of a replacement for Omnigraffle or Omnifocus. I had a recent fun project where I needed to install Python and a bunch of Python tooling and libraries (Jupyter, matplotlib, numpy, pandas, etc). Setting PATH on Windows is one of the most bizarre things. And even then I could not get everything to work. There were weird version conflicts, and this was all trying to use the Linux Subsystem for Windows which was insanely slow. Why can’t I just update one file on my file system from a text editor to update path configuration?
  - newhna 6y ago
    WSL2 is fast, rock-solid and outperforms a Mac with iterm2 by far. I don't know which fluidity you mean on a multi montior setup you lack on Windows. Re short-cuts Windows has more (just think of win+number or built in window management) or autohotkey which owns karabiner. MacOs is good if you need Xcode but other than that? Idk
    - tracer4201 6y ago
      > WSL2 is fast, rock-solid and outperforms a Mac with iterm2 by far. You have benchmarks for this? I’m running a Windows Pro installation with a Core i7 4790K and 16GB memory. My 2015 MacBook is much faster. I honestly thought the WSL thing was just a gimmick and some online searching told me that there are IO performance issues.
      - newhna 6y ago
        No benchmarks but I had never issues with WSL2. I on a 8550u with 8gb.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - tracer4201 6y ago
      I was curious if I was using an older version that led to my problems with WSL2, but I just did a search right now for “WSL 2 slow” on Google. I see threads and discussions in the past couple months with people still calling out how slow it is and other issues.
      - robk 6y ago
        Seems to be around how some people are using filesystem heavily. For iterm2 style use its great
      - kyriakos 6y ago
        Keep in mind that Wsl2 barely came out of public beta so obviously it will have online comments about performance issues when compared with products that don't have a public beta. And yet if you search for it you can find a lot of hits on macos bad performance. Not saying either is better just that the metric you set is inaccurate.
  - robk 6y ago
    Omni focus web app seems to work just fine for me. I love the ios version - never tried Mac
- dvtkrlbs 6y ago
  With with version Catalina OSX becoming more and more like IOS. More restricted system and it is a lot buggy than previous versions. Personally i dont think i will continue with macOS in my next laptop.
- bArray 6y ago
  > Not only are they better built In this case, but there are plenty of examples of a sub-par performance from Apple. Broken keyboards, display cable issues, shipping with overheating CPU profiles, removing buttons, useless touch bar display, removal of ports - to name a few. As Rossman says: "the only part on a MacBook that doesn't blow are the fuses". > they also run macOS Again, not been a fan of their recent work. I can get a very macOS-esque experience in Linux. It's not always a seamless experience granted, but it's really quite acceptable.
  - D13Fd 6y ago
    > I can get a very macOS-esque experience in Linux. The problem is the “can get.” If you value your time at, say, $200/hr, how long can you spend learning about Linux distros, repos, software, and troubleshooting issues etc before you’ve spent the savings from buying a non-Mac-native laptop?
    - mping 6y ago
      If you value your time like that you might as well sleep 2h less and earn 400$ every night. This is not a fair comparison because there are a lot of benefits of troubleshooting, most of them intangible. If you don't like it fine, just get a Linux "certified" laptop or a Mac.
      - D13Fd 6y ago
        I responded to a person saying that he could, with enough time, make Linux like Mac OS. I'm saying it's not worth the time for many people, might as well just buy a Mac OS native laptop. I don't see how buying a Linux "certified" laptop figures into this - they aren't "mac-like." And I agree with you, just buy a Mac if that's what you're looking for.
        bArray 6y ago
        > with enough time I wouldn't want to overstate the effort, we're talking a day at most. The reward is a machine that you have a high amount of control over.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
  > Not only are they better built This could be true about some models some time ago. The unibody design is now common among other brands and is not a particularly good thing - the two components that wear out most on laptops is the battery and the keyboard, and traditionally on non-Apple laptops you could at least replace the former yourself.
- rowanG077 6y ago
  Better built is an objectively better. Having OSX is not. It's only better if you actually think OSX is the best OS.
close04 6y ago
A title like this sells. I'd love to see the author answer why Acer themselves sell much more expensive Intel based laptops.
sneak 6y ago
My biggest one is that Apple seems to have let the privacy ship sail away in current versions of macOS: even with Siri, Location Services, iCloud, FaceTime, iMessage, App Analytics/reporting, Software Updates, ntp, and the App Store, all disabled, the thing still phones back home to Apple like mad. Little Snitch (with the disablement of built in Apple service whitelisting rules) is essential for basic operation of a private/secure blank macOS install (which is sad and frustrating after spending most of $6000 on a laptop). I will probably remain on Apple hardware as long as their boot security can be disabled to boot other OSes (and Linux hackers continue to put in the work to support their weird T2-mediated NVMe flash) simply due to build quality, but should they go too far off the “can still boot and use normal, open source, auditable crypto software” track I’ll be forced to switch to something of lower quality like something from Purism.
hobos_delight 6y ago
I've been using Apple laptops since the G4 Ti Powerbook (in ~2003 I think) - and have generally been on a ~2-4 year upgrade cycle. Last February (~15mo ago) I went from my 2015 13" MBP to a new Macbook Air - they had touch ID, no touchbar, I didn't mind the keyboard and the performance with similar to the old MBP I had. Now I'm not sure if it's Catalina or the hardware itself - but this machine became almost unusably slow, coupled with some issue where it would not hold a charge - I would routinely open it up in the morning and it would give me the dead battery icon. On this particular issue I tried to dig into it, and something was waking it from sleep every ~5 minutes or so - it was quite evident on the power usage graph, and I found some others online with similar stories. And even on top of this the machine would occasionally panic and reboot - I don't think I ever saw my old MBP do that, and I'm unsure if this is a function of the hardware or the OS update. Either way I got pretty frustrated with it, as it had moved into the realm of how I remembered linux laptops - a month ago I finally made the call to get ride of it (read: give it to the wife) and get a new laptop. I picked up a dell xps13, turned off the touchscreen in the bios and loaded up my debian netinst and began the process. Immediately I was hit with the wifi in this device needing the non-free drivers sigh just like I remember installing linux on a laptop... Either way, I got it done and I'm actually really happy with the outcome - most things just work (wifi, media keys, keyboard backlight) straight out of the box - the only thing lacking is the fingerprint reader, which apparently Dell is releasing drivers for. The thing isn't perfect - battery life is ~5-6 hours (firefox, editor, terminals) where I think I was getting 8-9 at least on the MBA, and this is far from the advertised time under Windows. So all in all, I feel that there has been a significant decline in the experience on Apple hardware over the last couple of years - as I said above I'm not sure if this is hardware, software or both. Another anecdata point: the wife picked up a new iMac when they were released pre-Catalina - she loved it, however after the Catalina update she has had endless problems - the filesystem reporting different amounts of free space depending on how you view it, Photos not loading, the iTunes migration has caused endless headaches... So whilst I'm unsure of the hardware quality, I'm sure this is in part due to the changes in Catalina.
- foogazi 6y ago
  > I picked up a dell xps13 How’s the trackpad ?

by bArray 6y ago

saagarjha 6y ago

Not only are they better built, they also run macOS.

tracer4201 6y ago
I upgraded from a 2015 MacBook Pro to a 2019 16”. I heard there were tons of keyboard issues in the years in between. Aside from that, I stick with MacBooks because of the solid quality and macOS. I can’t work on Windows. I’ve tried again and again. I do have a windows machine for gaming, but programming and design work, the short cuts, fluidity, and general experience working in iTerm2 with multiple desktops is top notch. There’s nothing really to “fix” or make better. All my software on macOS is also top quality. I don’t know of a replacement for Omnigraffle or Omnifocus. I had a recent fun project where I needed to install Python and a bunch of Python tooling and libraries (Jupyter, matplotlib, numpy, pandas, etc). Setting PATH on Windows is one of the most bizarre things. And even then I could not get everything to work. There were weird version conflicts, and this was all trying to use the Linux Subsystem for Windows which was insanely slow. Why can’t I just update one file on my file system from a text editor to update path configuration?
- newhna 6y ago
  WSL2 is fast, rock-solid and outperforms a Mac with iterm2 by far. I don't know which fluidity you mean on a multi montior setup you lack on Windows. Re short-cuts Windows has more (just think of win+number or built in window management) or autohotkey which owns karabiner. MacOs is good if you need Xcode but other than that? Idk
  - tracer4201 6y ago
    > WSL2 is fast, rock-solid and outperforms a Mac with iterm2 by far. You have benchmarks for this? I’m running a Windows Pro installation with a Core i7 4790K and 16GB memory. My 2015 MacBook is much faster. I honestly thought the WSL thing was just a gimmick and some online searching told me that there are IO performance issues.
    - newhna 6y ago
      No benchmarks but I had never issues with WSL2. I on a 8550u with 8gb.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - tracer4201 6y ago
    I was curious if I was using an older version that led to my problems with WSL2, but I just did a search right now for “WSL 2 slow” on Google. I see threads and discussions in the past couple months with people still calling out how slow it is and other issues.
    - robk 6y ago
      Seems to be around how some people are using filesystem heavily. For iterm2 style use its great
    - kyriakos 6y ago
      Keep in mind that Wsl2 barely came out of public beta so obviously it will have online comments about performance issues when compared with products that don't have a public beta. And yet if you search for it you can find a lot of hits on macos bad performance. Not saying either is better just that the metric you set is inaccurate.
- robk 6y ago
  Omni focus web app seems to work just fine for me. I love the ios version - never tried Mac
dvtkrlbs 6y ago
With with version Catalina OSX becoming more and more like IOS. More restricted system and it is a lot buggy than previous versions. Personally i dont think i will continue with macOS in my next laptop.
bArray 6y ago
> Not only are they better built In this case, but there are plenty of examples of a sub-par performance from Apple. Broken keyboards, display cable issues, shipping with overheating CPU profiles, removing buttons, useless touch bar display, removal of ports - to name a few. As Rossman says: "the only part on a MacBook that doesn't blow are the fuses". > they also run macOS Again, not been a fan of their recent work. I can get a very macOS-esque experience in Linux. It's not always a seamless experience granted, but it's really quite acceptable.
- D13Fd 6y ago
  > I can get a very macOS-esque experience in Linux. The problem is the “can get.” If you value your time at, say, $200/hr, how long can you spend learning about Linux distros, repos, software, and troubleshooting issues etc before you’ve spent the savings from buying a non-Mac-native laptop?
  - mping 6y ago
    If you value your time like that you might as well sleep 2h less and earn 400$ every night. This is not a fair comparison because there are a lot of benefits of troubleshooting, most of them intangible. If you don't like it fine, just get a Linux "certified" laptop or a Mac.
    - D13Fd 6y ago
      I responded to a person saying that he could, with enough time, make Linux like Mac OS. I'm saying it's not worth the time for many people, might as well just buy a Mac OS native laptop. I don't see how buying a Linux "certified" laptop figures into this - they aren't "mac-like." And I agree with you, just buy a Mac if that's what you're looking for.
      - bArray 6y ago
        > with enough time I wouldn't want to overstate the effort, we're talking a day at most. The reward is a machine that you have a high amount of control over.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
> Not only are they better built This could be true about some models some time ago. The unibody design is now common among other brands and is not a particularly good thing - the two components that wear out most on laptops is the battery and the keyboard, and traditionally on non-Apple laptops you could at least replace the former yourself.
rowanG077 6y ago
Better built is an objectively better. Having OSX is not. It's only better if you actually think OSX is the best OS.

close04 6y ago

A title like this sells. I'd love to see the author answer why Acer themselves sell much more expensive Intel based laptops.

sneak 6y ago

My biggest one is that Apple seems to have let the privacy ship sail away in current versions of macOS: even with Siri, Location Services, iCloud, FaceTime, iMessage, App Analytics/reporting, Software Updates, ntp, and the App Store, all disabled, the thing still phones back home to Apple like mad. Little Snitch (with the disablement of built in Apple service whitelisting rules) is essential for basic operation of a private/secure blank macOS install (which is sad and frustrating after spending most of $6000 on a laptop). I will probably remain on Apple hardware as long as their boot security can be disabled to boot other OSes (and Linux hackers continue to put in the work to support their weird T2-mediated NVMe flash) simply due to build quality, but should they go too far off the “can still boot and use normal, open source, auditable crypto software” track I’ll be forced to switch to something of lower quality like something from Purism.

hobos_delight 6y ago

I've been using Apple laptops since the G4 Ti Powerbook (in ~2003 I think) - and have generally been on a ~2-4 year upgrade cycle. Last February (~15mo ago) I went from my 2015 13" MBP to a new Macbook Air - they had touch ID, no touchbar, I didn't mind the keyboard and the performance with similar to the old MBP I had. Now I'm not sure if it's Catalina or the hardware itself - but this machine became almost unusably slow, coupled with some issue where it would not hold a charge - I would routinely open it up in the morning and it would give me the dead battery icon. On this particular issue I tried to dig into it, and something was waking it from sleep every ~5 minutes or so - it was quite evident on the power usage graph, and I found some others online with similar stories. And even on top of this the machine would occasionally panic and reboot - I don't think I ever saw my old MBP do that, and I'm unsure if this is a function of the hardware or the OS update. Either way I got pretty frustrated with it, as it had moved into the realm of how I remembered linux laptops - a month ago I finally made the call to get ride of it (read: give it to the wife) and get a new laptop. I picked up a dell xps13, turned off the touchscreen in the bios and loaded up my debian netinst and began the process. Immediately I was hit with the wifi in this device needing the non-free drivers sigh just like I remember installing linux on a laptop... Either way, I got it done and I'm actually really happy with the outcome - most things just work (wifi, media keys, keyboard backlight) straight out of the box - the only thing lacking is the fingerprint reader, which apparently Dell is releasing drivers for. The thing isn't perfect - battery life is ~5-6 hours (firefox, editor, terminals) where I think I was getting 8-9 at least on the MBA, and this is far from the advertised time under Windows. So all in all, I feel that there has been a significant decline in the experience on Apple hardware over the last couple of years - as I said above I'm not sure if this is hardware, software or both. Another anecdata point: the wife picked up a new iMac when they were released pre-Catalina - she loved it, however after the Catalina update she has had endless problems - the filesystem reporting different amounts of free space depending on how you view it, Photos not loading, the iTunes migration has caused endless headaches... So whilst I'm unsure of the hardware quality, I'm sure this is in part due to the changes in Catalina.

foogazi 6y ago
> I picked up a dell xps13 How’s the trackpad ?