I've been very happy with my 2012 Macbook Pro Retina and was looking forward to a worthy successor. However the unveiling of the new Macbook was a big letdown for me. Everything that made the Macbook "Pro" seems to be removed. Enough has been said about the topic already what I want to do here is look at what alternatives there are.<p>So my question for you is; Which laptops, around the price point of your average Macbook Pro, come close to the build quality of the Macbook and use hardware that's greatly supported in Linux.<p>Extra kudos if somebody can recommend me a terminal on-par with iTerm. Out of all my apps I think I would miss iTerm the most.
I asked the same question and read replies to others. Just a quick summary;<p>- Lenovo has decent laptops. Personally, I'd not touch anything from Lenovo after their shady stuff. (Maybe not an issue on Linux, maybe it is. I don't trust them)<p>- Dell XPS series are really good but people complain about coil whine, worse battery life compared to MBP and hit/miss trackpad. It might not be that big of a problem. And if you are running in clamshell mode, these are generally no issues. I don't run clamshell though.<p>- The Razer Blade stuff seems to be great too. They are mostly aimed for gamers but look decent. Someone mentioned about huge display bezels being really huge in person. Gotta see. I can't find any info about them here, maybe they only sell in USA.<p>- I skipped Asus due to past support experiences with them. Also some smaller vendors due to possible support issues I'd have especially since I'm out of US.
Massive tip if you decide to stay with a < 2015 MacBook Pro.<p>Open up the laptop and reapply the thermal paste on the CPU with something high quality like Arctic Silver. It really needs redoing after 1-2 years. This will result in a significant improvement to overall performance. Why ? Because when OSX detects that the laptop is overheating it schedules a dummy task e.g. secd or kernel_task to throttle the CPU. Cool the laptop and the throttling stops. Use iStat Menus or top to check for the process.<p>Takes all of 10 minutes and iFixit can guide you through it. As much of a performance difference as going from HDD->SSD. The other most vital thing to do on OSX since all of the daemons result in lots of random reads (check fs_usage).
Opportunities:<p>- A Thunderbolt 3 dock that has all the missing ports in new MacBook Pro<p>- Lenovo, HP, Asus release properly supported notebook with Linux similar to Dell XPS Developer edition. Makes desktop Linux available across PC industries.<p>- Microsoft release Surface Pro and Surface Book with Mubuntu (MS version of Ubuntu, since MS already has working relationship with Canonical)<p>- Cloud service via emulator that allows developer to build, test and submit iOS apps without actually owning a Mac<p>- Google release Pixel Book which runs a brand new OS that is ChromeOS+Android hybrid.<p>We need:<p>- Adobe releases Photoshop & Lightroom for Linux<p>- Microsoft releases Office for Linux<p>- A few major games for Linux. Makes Linux a game platform.<p>- One or two major Mac developers develop for Linux<p>- More developer using Electron and React Native for Ubuntu<p>But we will be back to the same by spring 2017 when Apple refreshes MacBook Pro with new CPU and cheaper price.
No terminal is on par with iTerm. I was using Linux and *BSD for years, used many terminals, and of all iTerm is bread and butter (and with that font rendering and retina screen, nothing comes close). I would recommend to evaluate your needs, but be objective! If you can live with 16GB of RAM (I can, I do not do anything that would require me to use 32GB of RAM) then buy last year model. I have it, amazing machine.<p>And maybe it would be better to hold on to your MBP, and buy Chromebook, at least to test the water with Linux (or whatever OS you want to use). Install them on small machine, setup few essential programs to you and use them for few weeks. Why am I telling you this? Well I really appreciate some things on macOS, which will keep me glued to it for few more years at least. (iTerm is one of those things)
Just got a Thinkpad T460s. Practically the same dimensions and specs of a X1 Carbon but with replaceable memory and disk. Can easily be made to have 20GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD, and if someone makes a 32GB DIMM could potentially go up to 36GB of RAM although that's not advertised as supported. Everything works in Linux just fine and the 2560x1440 screen looks great.
I mostly used Macs for about ten years, but I don't like the direction the ecosystem is taking (cloud, app store, etc.), so recently switched to an XPS 13 (developer edition) running Ubuntu. (I actually also gave an SP4 a good chance for a few months, but couldn't get on with Windows.) It's pretty decent (both the laptop and Ubuntu) - sometimes wish the display was brighter or speakers louder, but depends on the environment. Nice size, bit heavy, but feels solid. Wifi was a bit dodgy before updating to 16.10 - seems fine now though. The HD screen is nice (once you change the scale setting; there's a problem with the touch screen not working after sleep though). I've never been much of a keyboard snob, but this keyboard is so much nicer than a MBA.
One thing I never liked about my Macbook is that there is no option for a matte screen. So I consider switching and finally getting a matte one now:<p><a href="http://www.productchart.com/laptops/sets/1" rel="nofollow">http://www.productchart.com/laptops/sets/1</a><p>I will replace Windows with Linux. I heard Thinkpads are good for this. But the Dell XPS series looks very compelling too.
You might want to be more specific, about the "pro" part that you want which is no longer in the MBP. For instance others have pointed out that the 16GB limitation is in all notebooks which use the same intel chipset and low voltage ram, so you'll have to sacrifice battery life for more memory. That's fine for some folks but not for others.
I honestly don't know what everyone is complaining about WRT the Dell XPS line. I have a refurbished Dell XPS 13 (Skylake) -- NON-Developer Edition even -- and I'm very happy running Arch Linux without any headaches. It's a great laptop with excellent battery life and performance. I don't experience coil-whine at all. (Although, I've heard the rumor that the coil whine is a bigger deal on the XPS 15.)<p>Naturally, the Arch Linux community has an extremely helpful wiki to help you get set up:<p><a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_(2016)" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_(2016)</a>
I'd also miss iTerm.<p>Have you looked at the Dell XPS 13 Dev edition, the Razer Blade Pro, the Lenovo X1 Carbon, Lenovo T Series, or the Asus UX305F?
What about a 2015 MBP? I also have a 2012 model, with a little water damage, and am seriously thinking of upgrading to 2015 and then giving Apple one more upgrade cycle to come to its senses.
copying my comment from here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12832547" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12832547</a><p>You can buy a dell xps 15 today that comes with: 3840 x 2160 display / 1tb pcie solid state disk / nvidia gtx 960m (crucial for developing cuda programs and prototyping deep learning on your laptop) / 32g ram. For $2340 (ten percent off coupon at the top of the page). I'm not sure if this link will work: <a href="http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/productdetails/xps-15-9550-laptop/dncwx1609h" rel="nofollow">http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/productdetails/xps-15-9550-la...</a><p>And this thing comes with regular usb ports and an hdmi port instead of usb-c nonsense so I don't have to immediately drop $250 in dongles just to keep the capabilities I already have. (And one usb-c port).<p>here's a detailed guide to getting with ubuntu from a year ago: <a href="https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2301071" rel="nofollow">https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2301071</a><p>it appears that it only works modestly well. So if you buy this, you're probably going to have to live with Windows or the issues in the above thread.<p>========<p>My personal plan is to buy a 1-ish year old mac and cross my fingers that someone builds a well-supported powerful linux laptop by 2018. Good sleep/power management support seems to be a common problem.
I'm in the same situation and right now leaning towards a beefy hackintosh desktop + maybe one of the small macbooks. It's such a pain though.
I've been using an HP Spectre X360 15" with a 4K touchscreen which is truly amazing. The only downside is that the one USB 3 port is not a thunderbolt port, making it not all that useful unless you get a dongle that allows you to plug in a regular USB cable.<p>Other than that, I've been enjoying it immensely and it made me stick to Windows at a time at which I really wanted to switch to Linux or MacOS.
I find Razer Blade laptop as a good replacement for Macbook pro. Also Pc Specialist has custom laptops - <a href="https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/laptops/" rel="nofollow">https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/laptops/</a>
The options I am considering as substitutes for the new mbp 13" are:<p>- The new razer blade stealth: Great built quality, kaby lake, usb-c/thunderbolt 3, great screen, reasonable price, although im not sure Ubuntu would work out of the box.<p>- Xiaomi Air 13: This is not really a competitor but im really tempted to try it. It is cheap (less than 1k) it looks like having a nice built quality, fast ram, good i5 processor, dedicated nvidia GPU ( so may be some acceleration for training small deep learning models). USB-C, USB3, HDMI, Ubuntu works out of the box. CONS: you have to import it.
I love my Aorus X3: <a href="http://www.aorus.com/Product/Features/X3%20Plus%20v6" rel="nofollow">http://www.aorus.com/Product/Features/X3%20Plus%20v6</a><p>Portability, power and build quality are all excellent. Battery life isn't up to MacBook standards, but you get a good 4 to 5 hours on a single charge which is still fairly usable. The trackpad isn't as nice as a MacBook either, but it's good enough. Everything else about it has the MacBook Pro completely outclassed in my opinion.
I am a Lenovo Thinkpad user x230 specifically. Heavily criticised by people who love their X220's but it works great for me 12" form factor and packs a punch, separate slot for SSD if you want one and loads of ports. I have 2 actually. One runs my home server. I dropped out of the main stream sphere mainly because of this carrot donkey driven eco-system (Who knows where they are taking us). I am quite happy with my Arch Linux deployment. Its decent for gaming too.
This isn't really a recommendation, but if I could have it my way, I'd take this computer, except with OS X:<p><a href="https://system76.com/laptops/oryx" rel="nofollow">https://system76.com/laptops/oryx</a><p>• 15.6" 1080p IPS LED-backlit Display<p>• NVIDIA GeForce 1070 8GB<p>• 3.5 GHz i7-6700HQ<p>• 32 GB DD4 at 2400MHz (upgradeable to 64 GB)<p>• OS Drive: 512 GB NVMe (PCI with 2600MB/s read and 1600 MB/s write)<p>• 2nd Drive: 2.5" 1 TB SSD<p>• 1080p HD Webcam<p>• Kensington® Lock port<p>• 1x Gigabit Ethernet<p>• 1× HDMI<p>• 2× Mini DisplayPort<p>• 2× USB 3.1 Type-C<p>• 3× USB 3.0 Type-A<p>• Stereo Speakers<p>• Stereo Mic<p>• Headphone Jack<p>• Mic Jack<p>• S/PDIF<p>• SD Card Reader<p>• Ubuntu 16.04.1<p>$2,870<p>Obviously the dream would be for it to look like a MacBook Pro, but I would give up the sleek case if I could run OS X reliably on that sucker.
I'm absolutely loving my SP4 as my main laptop for a couple of months. It has enough juice to be able to do most things well, amazing display and weighs like nothing.
What's the use case?<p>If it's just for general web development, my plan is to buy a used 2015 MBP, but with AppleCare until mid-2018 or later, and re-roll the dice in two years.
What is so special about iTerm? Features, font rendering?<p>For features and portability, I can warmly recommend SecureCRT[0], you won't find a more capable terminal app anywhere.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.vandyke.com/products/securecrt/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.vandyke.com/products/securecrt/index.html</a>
Recently bought an Entroware Apollo (<a href="https://www.entroware.com/store/laptops" rel="nofollow">https://www.entroware.com/store/laptops</a>). Amazing device, if you don't mind Linux and are in the UK.
I've been struggling with the same question, ending up sticking with the MBPs.<p>Resell value, build quality, battery life, weight are all factors that other manufacturers can't match. I really wish they'd released something better though.
Just will left it here <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book" rel="nofollow">https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book</a>
XMG ( <a href="https://www.mysn.de" rel="nofollow">https://www.mysn.de</a> ) offers custom, fully configurable high-end laptops. Take a look if you really want high performance without compromises.
see also <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12815183" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12815183</a>