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The MBP is one of the most functional devices available. The wanky, hipster appeal is way overplayed. Plenty of people use them inspite of their image. Phones
by shirro 13y ago
The MBP is one of the most functional devices available. The wanky, hipster appeal is way overplayed. Plenty of people use them inspite of their image.
Phones satisfy the mobile convergence thing between organisers, phones, cameras and handheld games. Tablets satisfy the "computer as a bicycle" vision of Jobs and bring portable computing to the masses. But neither are really full featured enough for a developer or a college student.
When it comes to a full featured, keyboard equipped, programmable device there is bugger all that is light, powerful, has a long battery life and ships with a decent environment (posix, term, ssh) out of the box. Dell's XPS 13 DE delivers a bit of the picture but it doesn't have the quality bundled iWork apps that would appeal to a student and has worse battery life. They are getting there though.
The rest of the laptop market is hindered by shipping with Windows only and the difficulty of getting pre and post-sales driver support for the developers and students who require an environment like Linux. The industry has really fucked themselves trying to keep to the model of the glory days.
Hopefully Steam will help set things straight by creating a large mainstream market that more niche users like developers, students and scientists can benefit from.
Manufacturers are going to have to stop the race to the bottom and start building less models, higher quality and in bigger volume if they are to compete with Apple in price, quality and profitability. And they are going to have to explore well integrated Chrome OS and Linux packages and work on developing drivers with better performance and power efficiency.
- pjmlp 13y ago> The rest of the laptop market is hindered by shipping with Windows only and the difficulty of getting pre and post-sales driver support for the developers and students who require an environment like Linux. The industry has really fucked themselves trying to keep to the model of the glory days. Quite good for those of us that work across multiple OSs. Just install GNU/Linux on VMWare with CPU virtualization enabled and get two OS in a laptop with the minimum of fuss.
- danieldk 13y agoJust install GNU/Linux on VMWare with CPU virtualization enabled and get two OS in a laptop with the minimum of fuss. And far less battery life. I often run Ubuntu or Windows on my MBA with VMWare to compile some software. It's one of the best methods to soak your battery empty quickly.
- pjmlp 13y agoWell, I do have a laptop with Windows 7 and a netbook from Asus that was sold with a Linux distribution. I use GNU/Linux since 1995 and on a laptop still looks like 1995 to me, in terms of graphics card, battery, hibernation and wireless support. My Asus, which was sold with a supported Linux hardware, does not hibernate. In terms of battery life I am yet to find a laptop where GNU/Linux lasts longer than Windows.
- Joeri 13y ago> The MBP is one of the most functional devices available. The wanky, hipster appeal is way overplayed. Plenty of people use them inspite of their image. They are fine machines, but if you don't care about subjective things, like how a laptop looks, how much it weighs (an extra pound or 2 never really genuinely matters to a use case), and you only care about getting exactly what you need (not want) for the lowest price, then there is no way you would ever buy a MBP. They are a product that we convince ourselves that we need or deserve because we lust after it, even when a cheaper alternative would do just fine. I have bought macs for a while, but if I have to be really honest with myself there was always a cheaper alternative that was 'good enough', it's just that I subjectively want apple's products because they are 'nicer'.