4 ms·

Why not load a MBP with your preferred OS? I get not being an OSX guy but whats wrong with the hardware?

by stusmall 13y ago

aspensmonster 13y ago
The price tag.
- derefr 13y ago
  Isn't that the idea behind the word "premium"? This seems to be very similar to the "we can't find any programmers to hire" chant of Big Business -- nobody can find a decent laptop at the price they're willing to pay. Because the price they're willing to pay is ridiculous and below-cost, especially when all the other laptops are loss-leaders and the premium models make up the difference.
  - aspensmonster 13y ago
    My point was that, if you don't like the operating system and are going to use a different one, why pay a premium for the hardware when you can get substantially better performance for the same price from any of a number of providers? Because the Macbook is sexy and that's worth paying the premium? Don't get me wrong, the MBP does look nice. And plenty of people are clearly willing to throw lots of money at Apple for both the real and perceived benefits of the premium price. But if performance per dollar is my concern --and I'm forgoing the operating system, one of the "real" benefits IMHO-- numerous other competitors blow Apple out of the water.
    - derefr 13y ago
      "Performance per dollar" is a strange qualifier for a laptop. If you want something small, portable, and powerful, maybe one of those Mac Pro cylinders might suit you when they come out. If you don't (much) care about portability at all, just build something in a mini-ITX case with a handle, and throw it in the boot of your car. The point of a laptop is good, light, sturdy industrial design, long battery life, and quality interaction features (solid keyboard, responsive touchpad, good webcam, flat SPL curve on speakers, etc.), while optimizing performance given that. That's what you're paying the Apple premium for, not the OS. Those qualities remain when you run Windows on the hardware.
      - zurn 13y ago
        > run Windows on the hardware Out of the frying pan, into the fire...
- x0054 13y ago
  You can get a $2,500 MBP, work on it for 3 years, and resell it for $700 or so after. So, that's $1,800 for 3 years, or about $12/week. So the price is reasonable if its something you use to make money or use all the time. Plus, with MBP you get OSX out of the box, plus it runs Linux and Windows, or all 3. Even if OSX is not your cup of tea, it's nice to have OSX available if you like to play with iOS development. I have a friend who keeps bugging me about how expensive MBPs are. I asked him to find a better laptop for the money. I care about the following, in order: quality of screen, quality of keyboard, tough case, light wight, long betters life, fast hd, fast CPU, good gfx card. So far no results :) I actually kind of wish there was more choice in the high end market. I have seen a few nice ultrabooks, but they cost as much as a Mac, if not more, so what's the point?
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    The price of everything is reasonable if instead of comparing it against alternatives, you compare it against not buying anything. For example, $1000 shoes that last 1 year are reasonable when compared to going without shoes - only $3 a day, and you'll save money that you would have to pay to repair damage to your bare feet. Could you find a better pair of shoes for less than $1000? Where's the gold leaf, and why do they lace up the front rather than snap up the sides? I think not.
  - x0054 13y ago
    My argument is that you can not find a laptop with a nicer screen and keyboard, with good battery life, durable case, light frame, and amazingly fast HD for less money then an rMBP would cost you. And given that's its only $12/week, why not choose the best tool for the job, especially if your job is working on your laptop. Of course, same arguments can be applied to almost anything, but this thread was about premium laptops. You can't have a premium laptop that's also very cheep.
    - throw_1245 13y ago
      How about a Lenovo x230? Adding core i7 and 16GB RAM takes the price to USD 1300. Still weights around 3 lbs. http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x230/ http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x230/
dingaling 13y ago
> Why not load a MBP with your preferred OS? First, there's the principle of not giving Apple any more money! Second, Apple's laptops don't have any form of docking so using them in the office is rather cumbersome.
- Osiris 13y ago
  I have a third party dock for my late 2011 MBP and OS X always gets confused when I dock and undock when it's sleeping. It doesn't always detect my monitors (DVI and USB), sometimes the keyboard doesn't wake it up, sometimes it just crashes a black screen. So while the dock itself works pretty well, OS X doesn't feel like it's well tested in that type of scenario.
- Shivetya 13y ago
  Apple's emphasis on how it looks over function has always been a double edge sword. The lack of docking station, from both the hardware and software side, was the second most constant push back I received when asking about swapping the Dells out. With TB ports and the like it could have been worked out to one cable instead of an edge connector, yet they seem to have zero interest in the business. I have run Windows 7 even as primary at times but in the end went back to a Dell for work put an iMac back on my home desktop.
sz4kerto 13y ago
Because MBP hardware is not good enough. I have had to use a rMBP since April, and it just hate it. I don't care if it's extremely thin if it's running _that_ hot. I have to stick with it as I need to use OSX (what I also dislike), otherwise I'd buy a Dell Venue Pro 11 with an external dock or something like that.
benatkin 13y ago
No touchscreen.
616c 13y ago
Hahaha. You should try it and come back apologize for your ignorance. Installing Linux with all the customized hardware inside, just get an X screen/GUI is non-trivial, even on old Macs. Check out the Bumblebee Project to get an idea of how painful it is to just leverage the two graphics cards properly. This is not to mention even on Debian Wheezy (stable), you will load without the proper HW-interfacing components to spin up the fan. You can see how that is dangerous for an amateur, and you will know three hours later while configuring when your thighs turn bright red. Not that it happened to me though. This is just one small thing, go to any Linux distro wiki, how about Debian for example[1] if you cannot tell my bias, and read the MacBook page, then read all the personal blog posts, for old and new Macs and see the pain it takes. Even though it is annoying, I will give them credit as properly the only laptop popular enough to force even barely useable UEFI support. But Macs also half-ass that too. Seriously, if you are a Mac fan, but like Linux, you will end up in the end saying fuck Apple for all the unintentional pain they inflict on you. But hey, at least they invented cups, so how much can I complain? [0] https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee [1] https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Apple/ https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Apple/
- gillianseed 13y ago
  They didn't invent CUPS, they bought CUPS which was already an established FOSS print server solution.
  - 616c 13y ago
    Really? I stand corrected. Thanks for pointing that out. At work I often say that is the only thing I will praise Apple for. Now it is back to zero, and I can be the Apple contrarian I yearn to be. :-)

Why not load a MBP with your preferred OS? I get not being an OSX guy but whats wrong with the hardware?

aspensmonster 13y ago

The price tag.

derefr 13y ago
Isn't that the idea behind the word "premium"? This seems to be very similar to the "we can't find any programmers to hire" chant of Big Business -- nobody can find a decent laptop at the price they're willing to pay. Because the price they're willing to pay is ridiculous and below-cost, especially when all the other laptops are loss-leaders and the premium models make up the difference.
- aspensmonster 13y ago
  My point was that, if you don't like the operating system and are going to use a different one, why pay a premium for the hardware when you can get substantially better performance for the same price from any of a number of providers? Because the Macbook is sexy and that's worth paying the premium? Don't get me wrong, the MBP does look nice. And plenty of people are clearly willing to throw lots of money at Apple for both the real and perceived benefits of the premium price. But if performance per dollar is my concern --and I'm forgoing the operating system, one of the "real" benefits IMHO-- numerous other competitors blow Apple out of the water.
  - derefr 13y ago
    "Performance per dollar" is a strange qualifier for a laptop. If you want something small, portable, and powerful, maybe one of those Mac Pro cylinders might suit you when they come out. If you don't (much) care about portability at all, just build something in a mini-ITX case with a handle, and throw it in the boot of your car. The point of a laptop is good, light, sturdy industrial design, long battery life, and quality interaction features (solid keyboard, responsive touchpad, good webcam, flat SPL curve on speakers, etc.), while optimizing performance given that. That's what you're paying the Apple premium for, not the OS. Those qualities remain when you run Windows on the hardware.
    - zurn 13y ago
      > run Windows on the hardware Out of the frying pan, into the fire...
x0054 13y ago
You can get a $2,500 MBP, work on it for 3 years, and resell it for $700 or so after. So, that's $1,800 for 3 years, or about $12/week. So the price is reasonable if its something you use to make money or use all the time. Plus, with MBP you get OSX out of the box, plus it runs Linux and Windows, or all 3. Even if OSX is not your cup of tea, it's nice to have OSX available if you like to play with iOS development. I have a friend who keeps bugging me about how expensive MBPs are. I asked him to find a better laptop for the money. I care about the following, in order: quality of screen, quality of keyboard, tough case, light wight, long betters life, fast hd, fast CPU, good gfx card. So far no results :) I actually kind of wish there was more choice in the high end market. I have seen a few nice ultrabooks, but they cost as much as a Mac, if not more, so what's the point?
- pessimizer 13y ago
  The price of everything is reasonable if instead of comparing it against alternatives, you compare it against not buying anything. For example, $1000 shoes that last 1 year are reasonable when compared to going without shoes - only $3 a day, and you'll save money that you would have to pay to repair damage to your bare feet. Could you find a better pair of shoes for less than $1000? Where's the gold leaf, and why do they lace up the front rather than snap up the sides? I think not.
- x0054 13y ago
  My argument is that you can not find a laptop with a nicer screen and keyboard, with good battery life, durable case, light frame, and amazingly fast HD for less money then an rMBP would cost you. And given that's its only $12/week, why not choose the best tool for the job, especially if your job is working on your laptop. Of course, same arguments can be applied to almost anything, but this thread was about premium laptops. You can't have a premium laptop that's also very cheep.
  - throw_1245 13y ago
    How about a Lenovo x230? Adding core i7 and 16GB RAM takes the price to USD 1300. Still weights around 3 lbs. http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x230/ http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x230/

dingaling 13y ago

> Why not load a MBP with your preferred OS? First, there's the principle of not giving Apple any more money! Second, Apple's laptops don't have any form of docking so using them in the office is rather cumbersome.

Osiris 13y ago
I have a third party dock for my late 2011 MBP and OS X always gets confused when I dock and undock when it's sleeping. It doesn't always detect my monitors (DVI and USB), sometimes the keyboard doesn't wake it up, sometimes it just crashes a black screen. So while the dock itself works pretty well, OS X doesn't feel like it's well tested in that type of scenario.
Shivetya 13y ago
Apple's emphasis on how it looks over function has always been a double edge sword. The lack of docking station, from both the hardware and software side, was the second most constant push back I received when asking about swapping the Dells out. With TB ports and the like it could have been worked out to one cable instead of an edge connector, yet they seem to have zero interest in the business. I have run Windows 7 even as primary at times but in the end went back to a Dell for work put an iMac back on my home desktop.

sz4kerto 13y ago

Because MBP hardware is not good enough. I have had to use a rMBP since April, and it just hate it. I don't care if it's extremely thin if it's running _that_ hot. I have to stick with it as I need to use OSX (what I also dislike), otherwise I'd buy a Dell Venue Pro 11 with an external dock or something like that.

benatkin 13y ago

No touchscreen.

616c 13y ago

Hahaha. You should try it and come back apologize for your ignorance. Installing Linux with all the customized hardware inside, just get an X screen/GUI is non-trivial, even on old Macs. Check out the Bumblebee Project to get an idea of how painful it is to just leverage the two graphics cards properly. This is not to mention even on Debian Wheezy (stable), you will load without the proper HW-interfacing components to spin up the fan. You can see how that is dangerous for an amateur, and you will know three hours later while configuring when your thighs turn bright red. Not that it happened to me though. This is just one small thing, go to any Linux distro wiki, how about Debian for example[1] if you cannot tell my bias, and read the MacBook page, then read all the personal blog posts, for old and new Macs and see the pain it takes. Even though it is annoying, I will give them credit as properly the only laptop popular enough to force even barely useable UEFI support. But Macs also half-ass that too. Seriously, if you are a Mac fan, but like Linux, you will end up in the end saying fuck Apple for all the unintentional pain they inflict on you. But hey, at least they invented cups, so how much can I complain? [0] https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee [1] https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Apple/ https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Apple/

gillianseed 13y ago
They didn't invent CUPS, they bought CUPS which was already an established FOSS print server solution.
- 616c 13y ago
  Really? I stand corrected. Thanks for pointing that out. At work I often say that is the only thing I will praise Apple for. Now it is back to zero, and I can be the Apple contrarian I yearn to be. :-)