I don't get the amount of grudge towards Apple for the new MBPs. Yeah, they could support 32GB of Ram, more battery would be nice too, and yeah I think almost no one got overwhelmed by he innovation Apple brought to the table with them, but what are the alternatives?<p>The author mentions in another post why he is done with Apple after his 2013 13" MBP and states he has no use for the Touch Bar. Thats fine, just get the Pro without the bar and with physical function keys.<p>The build quality of other laptops just isn't on par with Apples. Greg Koenig and many others have analyzed why Apple has a tremendous edge over other vendors when it comes to building computers and gadgets from aluminum[1].<p>Also if your are used to macOS, its perfect integration of hardware and software, its polish and many of the very nicely crafted ("made with ︎love") 3rd party applications, it might be very hard to switch to a decent Linux distro, let alone Windows.<p>It may be wise to first try the switch on your current Mac, inside a Virtual Machine …<p>[1] <a href="http://atomicdelights.com/blog/why-your-next-iphone-wont-be-ceramic" rel="nofollow">http://atomicdelights.com/blog/why-your-next-iphone-wont-be-...</a> (Featured on HN ~ 2 weeks ago)
I feel like I'm missing something. If you don't need MagSafe, USB-A or SD card slots and all you want is Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C including for charging, then what's wrong with the MacBook Pro?
I looked at PC laptops recently for a linux project machine. You're going to be very disappointed in the build quality if you're coming from Apple. They are just-OK, and every little detail is worse.
Hardware aside, does anyone who was used to OS X and its app ecosystem's polish really find Linux or Windows that much better? I'd miss Photoshop, Lightroom, Sequel Pro, iTerm 2, Homebrew, Sketch, Transmit, Alfred, Reeder, Keynote, Airmail, Spotify... just to name a few.<p>Not to mention every other OS I've used has varying HiDPI support and typography really looks best on OS X.<p>I wonder if some design-minded Linux geeks will rally around making Linux on the desktop a polished enough experience to rival OS X?
I've been doing very similar research, but with slightly different constraints, so for those who might be looking for a more powerful laptop:<p>* 15 inch screen, preferably hidpi<p>* ability to power two external 4k@60 displays<p>* 64GB of RAM<p>* M.2 NVMe SSD (preferably Samsung SM961 / 960 Pro)<p>* quad core (this trumps kaby lake vs skylake)<p>* touch screen<p>Other than that, I tend to agree with the opinions expressed in the article.<p>I have found four possibilities:<p>* Dell Precision 7510 paired with TB15 thunderbolt dock (no touch screen)<p>* Lenovo Thinkpad P50 (People seem to have troubles getting 2 external screens at 4k@60, no touch)<p>* Falcon Northwest TLX / System76 Oryx Pro / Clevo (1080p no touch, bad battery, but has GTX 1070, more USB-C ports)<p>There is one more possible contender, which is the as yet unreleased kaby lake XPS 15. Given the XPS 13 refresh, I suspect we'll see the new XPS 15 in the December / January time frame. If I knew for certain that it would support 64GB of RAM, I would wait and get that machine, but at this point I'm leaning towards buying the Precision 7510 in the next week or two.
I've been happily running Dell computers for years. They're not perfect, but I've been using Linux for 20 years, and am not about to switch to Apple. I'm too attached to the freedom Linux gives me, and am mostly satisfied with Dells that run Linux as something that just works out of the box.
Any developers out there that truly <i>love</i> their Linux-based, non-Apple laptop? If so, what's your make & model? What do you love about it?
That post makes me want a MacBook. They all look cheap with so much plastic. Aluminum unibody in my 2012 rMBP is great, and it absorbed a drop by quite well, although with visible damage.
I've been eyeing the XPS 13/15 and took them for a spin at recently an MS store, though I'd get the dev/Linux version. Some things the reviews never seem to mention:<p>Nice screen, but it is quite glossy which sucks at my place with lots of windows. There is a matte option, but only with the low resolution screen. Not sure why a developer would ever want to use a glossy screen on ultra portable. Perhaps if you travel from dungeon to dungeon.<p>Second, the super thin keyboards in rage now have very little key travel. The XPS is better than the small macbook, but much worse than last years Pro. It is also a lot worse feeling than my old XPS. It makes a clanking sound when you use it. I was able to avoid that by touching very lightly, so partly my own fault but touching so lightly is less satisfying on some level. Perhaps the new Pro has a better keyboard but the Apple store did not have it in stock yet.
If you're considering upgrading then you might want to ask yourself whether you really need a laptop instead of a desktop. If you work from home and currently have a laptop that you can use while traveling (or for miscellaneous web browsing, media, etc) then a desktop might actually be a better fit.<p>I recently started feeling like it might be time to upgrade my 1st gen Carbon X1 and after doing some research I found myself really disappointed by how little the laptop landscape has changed over the last four or five years. After giving it some thought though, I realized that I do virtually all of my work at one desk anyway and decided to look into some desktop options. I found that you can put together something in a mini-case with an i7 processor, 64 GB of DDR4 RAM, 2 TB of SSD, a 28" 4k monitor, a mechanical keyboard, and a high quality mouse for less than about $2k dollars.<p>This made a lot more sense to me than spending a similar amount on a laptop that offers only marginal improvements over my current one. The obvious trade-off is portability but I would guess that most of us here already have laptops that are "good enough" for most purposes and which could still be used as necessary.
I get that different people have different needs, and someone might say there's a need for 64 Gb RAM laptop. But it's not fair to say that MacBooks are not for developers anymore. I'm really happy with 16 Gb RAM on my MBP, which allows me to run Android Studio, XCode, Rails server, Redis Server, PostgreSQL and dozens of other small things at the same time.
I don't see a reason for such reactions.
external displays are 80% hdmi and 20% vga. for the next five years there will be zero dongles available to you at universities.<p>yes, they are available chained to your employer and mine conference rooms, but that's not the norm when you actually need to project something and forgot your dongle.<p>I will happily give up the 0.0001mm it will gain to have both of those. my Asus has only a raised connector and is the same thinness of the models without.<p>irrelevant thickness > missing ports when you need them.<p>saying otherwise is buying into the thinest-is-better-marketing-pissing-contest and show that you have no idea that support for both those ports are already built into your APU. they just need to run a port with no extra parts. they just leave it out to market it easier to people like you that will pay premium for it.
Great write up, I like the simplicity and the common structure that allows for easy comparison. Would be nice in a chart view, but oh well.<p>The issue I face is that I need XCode and therefore need an Apple product. Currently using a mid 2010 MBP and was hoping for a good upgrade this round but don't have $3000 to spend. So I'll likely be looking at the used market.
Why do people so deeply need to buy a new laptop, right now? My MacBook Pro from a few years ago is still fine. It's in perfect condition. It's fast.
They all have one thing in common, i7-7500U or slower. That is because the quad-core i7 7th gen processor won't be available until next year, and that's probably the reason Apple stayed at the 6th gen for this refresh.<p>In my list of requirements quad-core is definitely prioritized over which gen the processor is.
The biggest downside for me of this Touch Bar gimmick is not that I have to look at it. I can touch type, but I'd rather have this than a menu bar. You have to look up to the menu bar anyway, and reach for the mouse. Noone is complaining that menu bars are still there. This is like the Office "ribbon" in hardware form. It's fine, stop whining.<p>The problem for me is that my laptop is usually in "clamshell" mode. If I'm at the office, I have an external monitor. If I am at home, I have an external monitor. So the touch bar would be used for Starbucks and Planes? Meh. If at least the external Apple keyboards had it...<p>I too have been considering other alternatives. And that's mostly because I am feeling fed up with having multiple machines. I want a machine with a decent GPU, which you can't have in Apple land, no matter how much money you are willing to throw at Apple.<p>They could have used those speedy thunderbolt connections to power external GPUs, much like Razer and Dell are doing. Even Microsoft is kind of doing it, with the GPU in the Surface Book's keyboard. If there's a company that knows how to do this video card switching thing, it's Apple. I can never tell when the MBP is changing GPUs.<p>The Surface Book not having Thunderbolt was a surprise to me. I guess that's out then.
If anyone needs Linux support, IMO the only horse in the race is Dell's "developer" line: <a href="http://www.dell.com/developer" rel="nofollow">http://www.dell.com/developer</a><p>A couple different Lenovo sales reps have told my team they won't support Linux. We'd have to wipe back to Windows.<p>While it's been a few years, HP said effectively the same thing.<p>The Dell line has options for 4k, up to 64G RAM. 17" screen if you want to lug around a cinder block (ok they're not that heavy).<p>Arch runs with minimal twiddling, like installing Broadcom drivers.<p>We're done fiddling with Linux on "Windows" laptops thanks to the Dell line.
I recently got a new laptop to run Ubuntu on.<p>Initially I bought a Lenovo Yoga 900 - the hardware was great, but I ran into the bios shenanigans which blew up on HN and Reddit a week or so after I'd returned it. (They have since fixed it.)<p>I then bought a Dell Inspiron 13 7000 which is nice. Touch screen, convertible, reasonable resolution, affordable. Ubuntu installed easily (although I had to jump through minor hoops around UEFI) and everything has worked flawlessly.
I am super happy with my Lenovo T450s - it's sturdy, has a super crisp, beautiful IPS display, very long battery life, trackpoint. The only bad thing about it is that the speakers point downwards into the table, but I rarely use them anyway. I run dual-boot Windows 10 and Linux because I need both for my work. The newer Linux kernels support everything and work perfectly with this computer.
On the XPS 13: <i>Cons: Expensive. Unnecessary SD card slot</i><p>I find this amusing and interesting. I've seen lots of complaining about the MBP dropping SD card support ("photographers HATE it!"). It looks like everyone rejects it for not-entirely overlapping reasons. Reminds me of political candidates, where everyone has differing reasons to <i>not</i> vote for them.
nice one--for the same reason, i'm doing the research and creating a list of options just now. Myy requirements lists, at least for your first two sets of bullets, are the same.<p>My leading contender at the moment is an Alienware 13, which is sold in three different configurations from $1,000, $1,100, and $1,500. (note: i have no affiliation with Alienware nor am i a gamer).<p>it's not ideal for my use cases (which are probably similar to most other dev), eg, i don't need the industrial strength speakers, which is one of the reasons the box depth is a little on thicker than most laptops to say the least. After having a MBP for the past 7-8 years, an Alienware will feel practically cuboid.<p>one additional criterion i have is high build quality which has led me to look closely at ThinkPad and Alienware. I had an Alienware quite a few years ago before the company was purchased by Dell; The build quality was superb; i have no direct experience with the quality of the newer units (post-acquisition).
What's with the desire for a 4k laptop? The 5.1 megapixels on my 15" rMBP are certainly more than I can see (36yo here). Especially as this guy is looking for a 13" screen, and more pixels leads to less battery life, I don't see the draw.
Thanks, great writeup - I bookmarked it because my 5 1/2 year old MacBook Air is literally wearing out. I really like Mac laptops but the closest match to my needs now is a MackBook which is probably about as fast as my 5 1/2 year old laptop. Our local non-official Mac store tech guy was telling me that the MacBook is surprisingly fast and since he knows me and my habits (I tend to develop on large memory, multi-core VPSs) he was recommending it highly to me. Still, it seems expensive for what you get.
Apparently Dell still has Ubuntu edition laptops. Based on Reddit comments, they seem to be working really well. For 16Gb ram and this insane resultion, seems great deal for $1800.<p><a href="http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=cax13ubuntuh5133&model_id=xps-13-9360-laptop&c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04" rel="nofollow">http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=cax13u...</a>
Any recommendations for <1200€, high dpi, matte, i7, 16gb ram, 15"?<p>I don't mind to carry a bit.<p>Best I could find so far: <a href="https://www.cyberport.de/?DEEP=1C10-2WN&APID=6" rel="nofollow">https://www.cyberport.de/?DEEP=1C10-2WN&APID=6</a> (german, but I guess you can see the specs, goes under the brand name "Clevo" elsewhere. would need to upgrade ram, but there is plenty of space I think)
I would like to find a laptop with a touchpad as good as a 2010 MacBook Pro.<p>I'm not aware of any, and this article seems to confirm it:
<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/macbook-touchpad-better-than-windows-10-touchpads-2015-8" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessinsider.com/macbook-touchpad-better-than-...</a>
One of the things I have a hard time giving up when looking at alternative laptops is the TrackPoint on my ThinkPad. I've grown to love it and I'm not a fan of most trackpads (although I think Apple got it right with the MacBook). That leaves the ThinkPad P50 as perhaps the only serious contender for me.
Btw 13" MacBook Pro vs. HP Spectre x360 Late 2016 Comparison Smackdown <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNMrMoT5cb0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNMrMoT5cb0</a>
Man Razer went long way, that laptop looks awesome. Definitely something to distinguish you from others.<p>I am would have to research a lot if people got Ubuntu to work there well. Last time I tried 2 yrs ago on my then old Macbook pro, took 2 days to configure everything. Then battery life simply was not that good and I went back to osx.