Comment by areoform
4 years ago
So yesterday I wrote about the blurring lines of ownership, and people came back with some fairly disparate responses. It's fair to say that I was mostly dismissed. https://youtu.be/Hg9F1Qjv3iU?t=3177 , timestamp 53:33) and they have no intention whatsoever of taking away our ability to do general compute on the machines we buy and own.
Except...
Apple can already decide what binaries you can execute. Should they choose to.
Apple is now restricting what other OSes you can boot into. As they've chosen to.
Apple can now make their machine reject a new, third-party repair part like a bad transplant. Should they choose to.
It's clear where they're going. And I'm jumping ship. It's painful to do so, given how invested I am in the ecosystem, but we're already beyond the threshold that many of us would have left earlier in the decade.
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edit - It's also really hard as a designer + developer + would-be researcher in the making to find a good computer. Most non-Apple laptops don't have very good color accuracy. They also don't have good trackpads, and their keyboard + trackpad alignment is wonky (it's off-center in a lot of cases! How weird is that???)
I'm trying to find a laptop with good build quality, long battery life, a good display that I can design on, a good trackpad so that I don't have to carry around a mouse, good speakers would be a plus, and light enough that I don't feel like I'm lifting weights while working on my laptop. And this package should ideally come with 512GB of SSD storage and, at least, 16GB to 32GB of RAM.
Oh and it shouldn't be more expensive than a Mac as many of these laptops are!
Any suggestions?
Yeah so basically in the windows world, a lot of the good laptops are under the "business class" of the various manufacturers:
Dell Precision, HP Elite Book, MSI Prestige
In the consumer world the Dell XPS, Asus Zenbook, Asus Pro Art are the way to go for a designer.
Dell Precision is probably the overall best laptop. MSI Prestige is targetted right at you though, with color accuracy and a good display. The only brand I can personally vouch for is Dell. I and my partner use XPS's, and a good friend of mine has a super nice Precision that I am jealous of (specifically the ports! I'm so over USB-C)
Lenovo Thinkpad is another popular line, seems conspicuously absent from your list. They're known to have good resale value, and to work well with Linux. If you're getting up to the Precision line, the Lenovo P series workstations are also worth considering, though given they're actually professional-grade machines with Xeon and Quadro parts they'll be more expensive than a Macbook Pro.
There are also boutiques like System76, that white label, upgrade, and manage driver compatibility for Clevo laptops which may be worth considering, they just came out with a new Lemur Pro like yesterday.
Check Thinkpad screens carefully as a lot of the new amd ones come with terrible 'business class' screens that I don't want to use as a developer, let alone as a designer .. and a repairman told me they are glued on these days so you can no longer swap them as you used to be able to.
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Lenovo P series workstations are also worth considering
I have a P72 and it is garbage. Plugged into a docking station it works OK as really expensive mid-range workstation. Trying to use it as a laptop causes the fans to spin like crazy, performance throttled to shit and the and battery life of maybe 90 minutes for even fairly modest workloads. The similarly specced Dell Precision I had before was much better in every way and was actually usable as a laptop.
The P5X series that many of my colleagues have seem much better.
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Lenovo might be known that way, but they are exceptionally bad at supporting Linux. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-admits-ThinkPad-CPU-thr...
As far as I know this issue is still not fixed so I have to use this hack: https://github.com/erpalma/throttled
I’ve also had tremendous Thunderbolt-related firmware issues that could only be fixed in Windows. If you use Linux, there are much better options than Lenovo. I still use my T480 daily but I miss my old XPS 13, which gave me no issues ever.
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I sent my Lenovo in for warranty service for a faulty SSD ribbon cable and... they lost it. And they haven't replaced it. They've told me four times over the course of the last five months that I'll get a call in 3-5 business days. It has never come of course.
I know I'm not alone; even just in my circle there are two other stories of horrible mishaps with this company.
Lenovo makes some decent machines, sometimes, but their warranty service is not to be trusted.
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I've got a P51. It's essentially always on fire and the fans are really loud.
Not sure I'd recommend it. Build quality is very good however.
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Having used everything from xps to surface book 2, no laptop comes close to a ThinkPad. I am pretty much a fanboy of ThinkPad keyboards
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Big bonus of the proper "business" laptops also is support. Wouldn't want a work machine I rely on without on-site support anymore (of course ideally you want a machine that never needs support, but since you can't rely on that from anybody...)
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Lenovo has got to be amongst the top, imho.
Interestingly, Apple covers more than sRGB, their panels are now being set to the broader DCI-P3 gamut. Whereas these laptops (at least in 2019) were slightly less than the sRGB gamut on testing. Except for the surface book,
https://imgur.com/a/6dGz3LO
I got these results from, https://www.notebookcheck.net/MSI-Prestige-15-A10SC-Laptop-R...
I got a 2019 Dell Precision 5540 with an UHD OLED, 3.840 x 2.160 and have 100% DCI-P3. And i think many other OLED Screens have it too.
When i configured the Laptop i could choose from these options:
FHD IGZO4, 1.920 x 1.080, 100% sRGB
UHD IGZO4, 3.840 x 2.160, 100% AdobeRGB Touch
UHD OLED, 3.840 x 2.160, 100% DCI-P3
Almost no displays get 100% when tested for gamut coverage. I'm not really sure why, I think it's some testing artefact. At this point (around 99% sRGB) what you should be looking at is coverage in larger gamuts (here 84.8% AdobeRGB).
> In the consumer world the Dell XPS [...] are the way to go for a designer
I have to use a Dell XPS 9560 and had two issues with it, most people never realize:
1. The Intel Thermal management driver is buggy so the device shuts off on very high-load tasks. You have to find the old driver on the internet and install it, and prevent windows from reverting to a new driver.
2. Only after two years of hanging connections and dropped UDP-packets I ran a speedtest and realized that this is not my home-internet being weird, but a systemic problem of the Wifi-card, which others have reported on the internet as well. Switched cards - getting windows to recognize the new one was difficult - and now I have normal Wifi.
Both of these issues are terrible for customers, and I still wish I wouldn't have ignored/overlooked the Wifi-issue for so long, as it interrupted work for a very long time.
Dell XPS 9360, good keyboard and touchpad, but my two issues, Dell software for updating drivers is just buggy. In general Dell can't write good consumer software.
Second is the same as yours, the Killer Wi-Fi is subpar. Can't keep a steady connection. Can trigger bluescreens if resuming without power cable and running Firefox (I think). Have not changed my Wi-Fi card yet.
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I got an XPS 15 7590 in part because I read that the "Killer" Wifi problems of old were finally fixed. Well not for me, after waking the laptop I have to manually disconnect and reconnect Wifi for it to work. Have not had time to contact support about it yet, but I'm very disappointed that they've stayed with "Killer Wifi" after the long history of problems.
I looked up the MSI Prestige and apparently there exist a limited edition of it that's completely pink, I mean really, really pink: https://www.msi.com/Business-Productivity/Prestige-14-A11X-P.... Not a big fan of the color, but it sure is interesting to see. I now wonder if the color would be a good deterrent for thieves.
I use MSI laptops almost exclusively although they're definitely wiped and reinstalled to win10 ltsc or freebsd.
In as much as I love the Mac touchpad for kanji/hanzi input the 2015 pro will probably be my last.
Wow, the way Craig is laughing at the question and so dismissive of it is really insulting. Maybe it's the more casual nature of the interview/discussion, but this really is the crappy icing on the cake of Mac users' continuously-declining control over the machines they spend their hard-earned money on. "Where do you even begin to come up with that theory"?? I mean, maybe we're seeing the gradual hampering of control over our computer with every OS X release in the past 5-10 years?
Get a Thinkpad. I replaced a 2015 MacBook Pro with a Thinkpad P1 Gen2 and love it. The trackpad isn’t as nice. The keyboard is better. Running WSL2 you have a great Unixy development environment in Windows. Or just install Linux. As thin and light as a MacBook Pro. Much better thermals, though still not awesome. Other, somewhat larger Thinkpads have better thermals. You can upgrade your RAM, add 2 SSDs and other peripherals like a 4G card etc if you like. Thinkpads come with fantastic service. Next business day on-site repair including for accidental damage and they mean it. Looks: It’s the design Apple copied for their very first laptops and is IMO better looking. They got it right the first time and haven’t changed it materially. Built like a tank. Not quite a tough book but they will take some abuse.
Lenovo was caught 3 times installing spyware on their machines. I don’t know why people forgive that
Because any self-respecting developer will reformat and reinstall Windows or ideally Linux and problem solved, no spyware.
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I have that exact laptop (work provided) and I’m not a fan. Trackpad is OK but not nearly as good as my Mac. 4K display sometimes looks amazing but the color accuracy is terrible and there’s a weird speckle texture that I assume comes from the touch overlay. I have a thunderbolt dock that supplies 85w of power but the machine refuses to charge from it and requires connecting the huge external power supply. But the worst part is I’ve gone through several incidents where some update occurred (never could narrow it down to one in particular) and I started getting multiple blue screens a day.
Edit: forgot one more annoyance. The laptop seems to frequently power off completely overnight even though it should just be sleeping/hibernating.
I am still suprised by the number of people that want trackpad's
If lenovo would come out with a laptop with no trackpad I would be the first to order it, I normally disable the track pad completely..
Traditional mouse or even a trackball are far far better
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Never had a blue screen. Haven’t had the power off problem though there is a distinction between regular sleep and deep sleep. When coming out of deep sleep it boots up like normal and restores RAM from disk. Don’t have a touch screen but have the highest end, non-touch 4K screen Lenovo offered. They also offered a very good HD screen and a not so good 4K screen. Display is not as good as on a Mac but this is more a Windows problem than a hardware problem. If color calibration is an issue, you could have had them calibrate it for you for 25 bucks when you ordered it. I believe Lenovo support can send someone to calibrate later on too for a somewhat higher fee.
If I got a Thinkpad I'd switch to Linux. I absolutely can't stand the Windows UI.
Linux UI is far worse than Windows. It's not even close. I use Linux but definitely not for its UI.
Windows can out-of-the-box do HiDPI, multiple monitors, multiple desktops, trackpad gestures, hardware accelerated UI rendering, facial recognition logins, and more. It was designed as a desktop OS.
On Linux some things are getting better if you stick to the Wayland+GNOME stack, but it's still so bad I can't recommend it to people on technical grounds. Use it if you believe in free software, not because you think it's "better" (it's not).
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My thinkpad works very well with linux, I recommend Zorin or Arch
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> they can simply toggle a switch for all users to "no unsigned binaries"
That switch was toggled with Big Sur and Apple silicon: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/08/19/apple-silicon-macs-to-req...
While true, that doesn't mean that an Apple-controlled key decides which apps will run:
> There isn’t a specific identity requirement for this signature: a simple ad-hoc signature issued locally is sufficient, which includes signatures which are now generated automatically by the linker. This new behavior doesn’t change the long-established policy that our users and developers can run arbitrary code on their Macs, and is designed to simplify the execution policies on Apple silicon Mac computers and enable the system to better detect code modifications.
(Source is the link you provided.)
NotebookCheck is a great website for laptop reviews. They even get into the nitty-gritty details of display calibration, input devices, power consumption, etc.
Here's a list of the laptops with the best displays: https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-Best-Notebooks-with-the-Be...
And here's a list of general multimedia laptops that would be roughly equivalent to a MacBook Pro: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Notebookcheck-s-Top-10-Multime...
I find that their reviews are amazing but their "top 10" lists are lacking. Their search: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Search.8222.0.html is marginally better, but in general, they're for researching specific models, not finding models, imo.
Edit to add: The other thing is that for their percentage laptop score, you should generally subtract 80 and multiply by 10. I've never seen them review a laptop below 60% or above 92%.
My partner bought a razer 13 inch to replace a MacBook Air. It wasn’t cheap, the build quality is excellent and it handles everything (she’s in an orchestra and records her parts on it, does graphic design and sometimes plays fortnite.). The screen is quite nice and the build quality is better than my system 76 (onyx pro) which I really like too.
Dave2d on YouTube gives pretty short and decent laptop reviews. I think he has a discord channel discussing the machines too
My 2017 razer stealth 13" has rather questionable build quality.
* Once a month or so, the touchscreen flips out and starts registering dozens of random finger taps per second. There are tons of complaints on the internet, but Razer never acknowledged it as a known issue.
* One of the long rubber pads on the bottom fell off after about a year and a half.
* The USB-C power cord's insulation was frayed from day one.
* When running Linux, the kernel continuously reports "correctable" pci-e errors, indicating a signal integrity issue. I had to turn down the verbosity of the messages to keep from spamming the journal.
* When running Linux, a monitor connected via HDMI has random "snow" noise. When playing any sound through the builtin speakers, the monitor blacks out every 10 seconds or so. Plugging in headphones "fixes" it.
* The bios' ACPI implementation is buggy and doesn't properly report whether the lid is open or closed. As a result, the laptop sometimes fails to go to sleep when I close it, and sometimes fails to wake up when I open it. It works most of the time but not always in windows, and linux got into a perpetual sleep-wakeup-sleep loop until I found the right workaround.
* A plugable brand thunderbolt dock "glitches" every 10-20 seconds when typing on a USB3 keyboard. Plugable claims it's due to buggy Intel firmware in the laptop. To be fair, a different brand of dock works fine, though.
Many of the signal issues can be caused by a faulty or low quality power supply. It took me a good half year until I finaly fugured why my Thinkpad touchpad and screen was acting up similar to your description. Turned out that my 65W power supply from Amazon was causing all the issues.
I never bought a Razer product because every time I'm looking at one I see negative reviews about their reliability.
It boggles my mind how they can be so successful.
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Manjaro GNOME on any of the Thinkpad models.
I switched away from Macbook Pro about a year ago, after using Apple hardware for about a decade.
It's working great, GNOME interface is solid and productive, Manjaro and AUR libraries just work. Highly recommend making the move, sooner the better as I'm sure you see the writing on the wall.
My Huawei Matebook Pro has been everything I wanted in a Mac, in a way I couldn't get from Apple.
Pros that Macbooks don't have: USB-A (along with USB-C), no touch bar, 3:2 screen, can enable secure boot if I choose so feel like I'll be able to run whatever I want on it, replaceable SSD, etc.
Pros that Macbooks also have: still has a great build quality, full day battery
Cons that both have: Non replaceable RAM
I can second this, I'm on the Matebook 14 2020 with the Ryzen 7 I think rather than the Pro. But after a dreadful run of luck with the XPS15, the Matebook (so far) is an amazing bit of kit for almost half the price.
It feels like if they play the next iteration right Huawei could blow most of the top end out the water, there's so little choice at the top end and they all seem riddled with build quality, hardware or software issues.
I'm glad I took the risk on the Huawei and I don't really regard the Chinese spying moral panic as an issue. If they want to spy on you I'm sure there's far easier ways online than trying to backdoor a highly scrutinised laptop.
My huawei matebook pro is the best laptop I've ever owned.
The only downside is that I have Windows 10 on it, and considering Microsoft actively destorys user data and has for 15+ years as company policy...I won't use it for serious work, only entertainment. :(
User state is also a time investment, so rebooting and destorying this is not ok even if all files by some stroke of luck were saved first
Are you not worried about your data going to China? Huawei looks indeed great, but I would never use it. Maybe if there was a way to replace components with ones from legitimate source like Mouser or digikey, to ensure there is no spying going on.
I think a firmware- or hardware-level exfiltration system that works anywhere would be valuable enough that they are not likely to burn it by putting it in systems sold widely to consumers, where it would only be a matter of time before it was detected. Unless monocasa is someone fairly important, that is!
I'm sold on the screen alone. Thank you!
Over the generations, I have had three Macbooks, four Vaios, a ThinkPad, a HP, multiple ASUS and Huawei. Most of the devices I have killed by travel: dust infiltration, vibrated the BGA chips off the boards by motorbike vibrations..
My requirements have all been fulfilled with the Huawei MateBook X Pro.
You could say it's heavily inspired by the MacBook. Aluminum case. Chiclet keyboard with decent travel. 2000x3000 display (2:3 ratio!). Awesome trackpad. Good battery life. Portable. Solid. 2x USB-C and 1x USB-A. Sustained multiple drops.
For context, I am able to pull solid 12-hour days on the device, without a mouse, without fatigue or frustration.
Cheaper than a MacBook. Might be worth a look.
But then you have to buy a Huawei ...
Not the best idea security and privacy wise.
I was skeptical initially. The laptop has been dissected and scrutinized by multiple people with nothing suspect discovered. On the other hand - which brand is safe ? Thinkpad has installed rootkits multiple times. Until there's proof to the otherwise, I think it's worth withholding preconceived ideas.
In any case, everyone has their own level of comfort, and that's important.
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Assuming you were going for a Macbook Pro "15 for 2399$
Recommendations for linux laptops (or checkout https://linuxpreloaded.com/ ):
* Tuxedo https://www.tuxedocomputers.com
~1000$ 1.5kg, Their "15, 1080p flagship is configurable with AMD Ryzen 7 4700U, 32GB RAM, 500GB M.2
They also have more expensive versions with 4k OLED displays if that's what you're into. Also "13.
* KDE Slimbook https://slimbook.es/en/store/slimbook-kde/kde-slimbook-15-co...
~1200$ 1.5kg, "15, 1080p, AMD Ryzen 4800 H, 32GB RAM, 500GB NVMe
* System76 https://system76.com/laptops/gaze15/configure
~1350$ 2.2kg, 15", 1080p, i7-10750H, 32GB DDR4, 500GB NVMe
* Purism http://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-15
They're trying to become and opensource Apple --> high prices, own linux distro, trying to make their own ecosystem, etc.
~2000$ 1.8kg, "15, 4K, Core i7 7500U (Kabylake), 32GB RAM, 500GB NVMe
> keyboard + trackpad alignment is wonky (it's off-center in a lot of cases! How weird is that???)
Those are laptops with numeric keypads, the trackpad is still centred relative to the "main area" of the keyboard (the home row and in particular the rest keys - the two keys with a little bump, F and J on a QWERTY) but it is off-centre relative to the body of the laptop due to the presence of the keypad.
Macs don't have numpads so if you've always used Macs it's understandable that you're not familiar with this type of layout.
In any case that type of placement makes no difference while you are using the laptop, because keys and touchpad are still where they are supposed to be relative to each other.
A lot of laptops, Dell for example, offset the touch pad to the left even though there is no keypad. You might be right that these are technically centered on the q to p span of the keyboard.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b4/De...
https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/reviews/05RhNkV9HnULG0LW4YRfKzZ-...
https://www.tec-int.com/media/catalog/product/cache/2/image/...
Good eye! I had never noticed those before. Yes I think those are centred to j and f. on the Macbook Pro I'm using right now, if you look carefully, the touchpad is centred relative to the body but it is slightly off centre relative to the home row.
I use my laptop on my lap, and usually when I sit with my hands folded in my lap, my hands fall along the center axis of my body. We are bilaterally symmetrical beings (with some internal asymmetries).
So unless I scoot the laptop off-axis or I have to move my hands off axis to type.
I'm unsure how this isn't unergonomic. It's not something to get used to. It's bad design. Period.
If you're using a laptop on your lap you've already given away any chance of ergonomic comfort.
Yes this has always annoyed me; having it centred under the keyboard makes no sense except in some weird universe where everybody uses only their thumbs to operate the trackpad. Trackpad alignment was one of the major causes of my RSI due to the horrible bend in the wrist it causes.
I haven't used a Mac in years but the one thing they always nailed was the trackpad. It's big and actually centred on the laptop body.
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Yes this is true, I see your point, with a laptop on your lap, in order to balance its weight optimally, you need to centre it relative to its mass, not relative to the hands rest position (F and J keys) so then when you have to type you need to move your hands sideways and it's not very ergonomic.
But you want to align the keyboard and the touchpad with the vertical axis of your body so you end up with 2/3 of the screen to your right. That's why I'm advocating no number pads on laptops.
I’d rather align myself with the screen, otherwise I’m mostly constantly looking towards a slight right, which is a terrible twist for the spine.
It’s much easier and more comfortable to adjust my hands over a slightly offset keyboard.
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Get a Thinkpad, P-series, lots of options. Run Fedora on it. Great machines, great keyboard, 4k screens, good color, goot battery life, lightweight. Everything works. Mac-level price, and worth it.
I would like to get a thinkpad, but I'm not sure Lenovo can be trusted any more than Apple can, especially since Apple atleast pretends to care about customer security.
https://slate.com/technology/2015/02/lenovo-superfish-scanda...
Lenovo is junk for anything but business class laptops. That the thinkpads X P W and T. The rest is the disposable, unrepairable, bloated junk you’d expect from consumer level products.
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Well, if you immediately overwrite the hard drive of the machine with some Linux variant (as I think the GP implie), I think it will solve a lot of problems like this from any manufacturer.
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That would be a worry. At least the people using Apple cares and tell you. And observe them very closely.
How is 4K support and fractional scaling? Does it work well?
In my experience, fractional scaling and 4k support is finally fine on at least whatever GNOME and Wayland Ubuntu 20.04 ships with, with two major caveats:
* Chromium-based applications (the browser and Electron apps like VS Code) still don't know how to render themselves with fractional scaling and end up ever so slightly blurry (but correct sized) on fractionally scaled displays. Think like very old applications (like Control Panel) on Windows 10. I use Firefox so it doesn't bother me that much. There's a issue in Chromium bug tracker following this, but I can't find it right now.
* Screen sharing full screen or other windows than browser tabs doesn't work on Google Meet / MS Teams. This is and has been an issue in Wayland since forever.
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Not op here. Using Gnome on Manjaro with Wayland. Fractional scaling works very well on a external 4K monitor and with internal HiDPI display.
Electron apps are blurry, tracking https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/10915
Good battery life? You must be joking? Less then 4 hours of light usage on x1 carbon gen 8. No hibernation.
Aren’t those all huge?
P1 Gen 3 is 0.72" x 14.24" x 9.67", compared to the 2019 15" MBP which is 0.61" x 13.75" x 9.48". Slightly larger? Sure, but I wouldn't call it "huge" if the 15" MBP is what you're used to. It's only 0.11" thicker than the MBP and half an inch longer. (And it weighs less.)
If you think so, then I recommend you get an X-series instead.
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> edit - It's also really hard as a designer + developer + would-be researcher in the making to find a good computer.
I woukld agree on desginer.
Absolutely not on developer or researcher.
Actually MacOS is for the reasons you mentioned incredibly developer-unfriendly (unless you target is of course the iOS ecosystem).
And for research there is no better platform but Linux. Unless you are in clicky-colorful frontend applications where I would doubt you are doing serious research.
>Apple can now make their machine reject a new, third-party repair part like a bad transplant. Should they choose to.
It seems the iPhone 12 is already rejecting non-original parts, even if the part comes from another iPhone 12: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24924761
Try metabox. (https://www.metabox.com.au/). They have a wide range of laptops at various specs and prices and form factors and whatever else. A lot of the guys at work have started to switch to them and they feel nice to hold and fondle.
I'm currently in the same boat as you and my next machine will be from these guys when my (admittedly very new) Macbook Pro gives up or gets taken over by Apple.
It's hard to say who is now Apple's target audience. It seems like their products are ideal for people who don't know much about IT and just want to watch a video or edit their holiday photos and maybe create a CV and will probably never go beyond that. Other people still enjoy Macs from 2012, but things are moving on when you look at desktop PC and what you can do. Apple looks more and more dumbed down.
It's like being trapped in a beautiful plastic cage. I used a MacBook Air (2012) for years as my primary development machine and really loved a lot about it, and it had some fantastic apps in the environment like QuickSilver, especially since it just worked compared to some of the Linux distros I had before that. But I'm glad I jumped ship when mine went obsolete.
>> It's like being trapped in a beautiful plastic cage.
To be fair, it's like being trapped in a silver gray aluminum cage with uniform body and irreplaceable bars. I wish more companies would make a PC laptop that doesn't suck aesthetically. Even when they use aluminum, most PC manufacturers don't spend much time on designing a good keyboard (arrow keys not having the same shape comes to mind.)
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I understand people doing live music with it. Think about what would happen if Windows forces you to update during your performance^^
Graphic designers because the nice display...
Otherwise i don't get it. I think for most other people it's a status symbol ;)
I especially don't understand why IT affine people buy it. Just buy DELL, HP, Lenovo, Alienware and install linux. Gives you more bang for the buck...
Very small audiance, but people with bad vision do enjoy the good displays on their machines and the GREAT built in zoom in OSX. Zoom in Windows is a joke.
Unfortunatly Linux isn't really an option just yet for a lot of us.
I really like my surface book. They are priced like MacBook pros (and spec'd like them too). The track pad is great, the pen input and detachable screen come in handy more than I'd have guessed when I first switched.
Apple has a pretty broad utility patent around their trackpads, which requires other manufacturers to work around what would seem like pretty obvious things.
PDF: http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/2017767/USD674382S1.pdf
Are there no other suggestions beyond the 2012 MBP?
I use arch linux on a Lenova Thinkpad T580, and I'm really happy with it, but I'm not sure about the colour accuracy of the screen. I doubt it's as good as you find on an Apple.
I, for one, am really interested in good, high quality alternative to apple laptop hardware, that meet the parent's criteria.
I just got an eluktronics. Basically barebones powered up systems. I got one running windows but that's only because I need the ableton software.
I agree with you that Apple is doing way too much to restrict users. But I also agree with Craig in that I don't see how Apple silicon is useful for them in helping to restrict users.
It is useful as a justification. Not from a technical point of view, but just to support the pathway they have planned and the story around it.
How is it useful as a justification? I don't see how forced signature verification can be more easily justified on a M1 Mac than on an Intel Mac.
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Dell XPS have an option for a fantastic 4K screen. After calibration it's better than the Retina screen on my 2013 MBP.
I don't know why they don't use a 2560x1440 for the 13" model
I have the 4K version. You can’t use it, you have to downscale to 1440p because you get lag at 4K. They released a 4K laptop that isn’t powerful enough to run at 4K.
I don't have any problems with the video. Are you trying to game on it?
Laptops and gaming is a terrible combination because of the thermals.
X1 Yoga 4 is what I went with recently when my 2016 macbook pro died for the 4th time since owning it.
Its very similar to the x1 carbon but converts to a tablet and it has an aluminum body.
I can't say I'm out of the apple ecosystem entirely, but I decided to spend my money elsewhere given the abysmal quality of the macbook pro line these days.
Thinkpads. Lenovo is far from perfect, but they have been good stewards of the brand.
I like Lenovo ThinkPads and even IdeaPads (I own one for personal use) but I do hesitate dealing with potential Chinese spyware from the factory for work uses.
I’d suggest using a Mac until it doesn’t actually work. Then you can find a new computer to compromise with.
Owning a Lenovo X1 Carbon 7th gen, 2019, 4K screen, 16GB RAM. extremely impressed with the hardware, running Linux Mint and going to move to Manjaro. Initially i tried PopOS! but they removed from Gnome the intermediate scaling (1.5X) of the UI, just like in MacOS you have Display - Scaled options. I really like the per monitor setting which you don't have in Linux. (or i didn't research enough); e.g. More space on main display (external 4k monitor) and Larger Text on the macbook screen. I'm also jumping ship due to the worst experience i had in 25 years dealing with technology, 1 month to replace a swollen battery with a 3rd party repair service. Apple throws now all this "complex" hardware issues to 3rd parties since their employees are pressuring them not to execute hazardous repairs in their own "centers"
Their SSL certificate revocation server (the default for macOS) goes down an you try to tie it to Apple Silicon being created to lock-in users? I understand the feelings people have about this but today's failure seems orthogonal.
It's just one of many recent actions that they've taken that have made people wary. The changes to app signing in recent OS X versions was another example of this
Huawei Matebook X Pro. A friend has one, 2019 model. Runs Ubuntu on it.
Trackpad is as good as it gets outside Apple, I'd say.
The display looks gorgeous. Can't say about color accuracy/fidelity though.
Re colour accuracy, checkout thinkpads, they even come with a colour calibration sensor so you can have them autocalibrate daily/weekly or whatever suits you.
> Oh and it shouldn't be more expensive than a Mac as many of these laptops are!
Clearly there's no need to jump ship if it's more expensive on the other side.
Do you _really_ need a laptop? That's my solution to the problem of no good Linux laptops. I've got a desktop at home now, and when I go back to the office, I'll pick up a mini desktop. I'll keep an old MacBook in a drawer if I need to take it into a meeting. When I used laptops only, they were just plugged into a monitor/keyboard/mouse at all times anyway.
What would make a good linux laptop for you?
One that reliably goes to sleep when i close the lid and then wakes up again when i open the lid.
Wifi that works... Audio that works... Plugging in and out external monitors that work... Netflix/Youtube in HD without burning the cpu and draining all battery
Basic hygiene essentially.
I use linux on a laptop every day for the past years and have tried Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, Ubuntu, Arch, Mint. Lately things are working, but only most of the time, never really really 100% as a Windows/OSX machine does. You always have to live with those 1/20 times sleep did not wake up or oh time to reinstall pulseaudio again for microphone to work.
We need new touchpad drivers (which are in the works) and screen resolutions that work at either 1x or 2x, not something in between.
> their keyboard + trackpad alignment is wonky (it's off-center in a lot of cases! How weird is that???)
Buy something without a number pad. Unfortunately most 15" laptops do have one.
If anybody from HP is reading this, I'll pay an extra for a keyboard without number pad on your 15" ZBooks with 3 buttons on the touchpad. Space bar and touchpad aligned with the center of the screen please.
>it's off-center in a lot of cases! How weird is that
It is off center if they have a number pad to the right of the normal keyboard layout. At first glance it looks weird, but it is 100% what you would want if you were using the laptop. Otherwise the trackpad would end up being right over where your right wrist is.
> I'm trying to find a laptop with good build quality, long battery life, a good display that I can design on, a good trackpad
Sounds like you might want a Microsoft surface (or surface book).
Not sure about the TouchPad - but at least there's a pen for drawing on the screen.
I came across this sometimes ago, I don't have any personal experience with their laptops but they seems promising.
https://starlabs.systems/pages/laptops
I just gotta say that I don’t think it’s clear where they are going. You are of course free to do however you like. And if you are leaving because of what they already have done, that’s reasonable, but if you are leaving because of what you are guessing that they might do tomorrow, is that really wise? I mean even with the ARM switch won’t it be as easy to switch to win/linux intel after a year if you are not satisfied?
I don’t like the boot thing either, and it’s a bit scary not being on intel as everyone else is right now, but I also think ARM feels really interesting and it might turn out to be a great new platform!
Edit: i mean it is not like they never listen, they did take bake the mac pro, they did fix the keyboards, you have cli tools to make a lot of changes in how macos works, etc. Of course I would like hundreds of things to be different, but I believe that is true of all platforms.
2012 Macbook Pro. Get the highest-spec Magsafe laptop you can find.
I second this. Catalina runs great on my 15" mid-2015 16GB/1TB, and it even runs shockingly well (bootstrapped) on my (unsupported) 13" mid-2009 8GB/512GB.
The 2009-2015 era of Macbooks are, not were, truly phenomenal machines.
Ugh i actually considered buying a 2015 mbp to replace my 2016 when it died for the last time THIS YEAR
What does bootstrapped mean? I’m surprised with Catalina running well on a 2009 MacBook. I felt it was slow on a Mac Mini 2014 where it is supported and went down one version.
The Dell XPS line is my recommendation. But it’s not that much cheaper than the Mac equivalents
You can disable this behaviour by listing terminal under Dev tools, and launching from there.
My ASUS Zenbook has been solid ! But the macs are definitely prettier.
System76 may be good
I have one. It’s not the finest quality hardware (rebranded Clevo I’m told)but it’s lasted and the os has been trouble free. I’d get another.
The onyx pro model, it’s not great on battery when using the nvidia graphics but it can play 3D games via steam.
I do kinda like the pop! Os Linux distro.
Buy an Intel Macbook Pro and boot Linux.
Then you don't get to use what is probably the biggest selling point of MBPs, their patented touchpad and gestures.
The only tool in that video you linked to is that dishonest cheerleader Gruber.
I don't think there's a one-sized-fits-all solution without something custom and extremely expensive ($15k+). Maybe a Lenovo T480 for most purposes and a dedicated second screen for color correctness? I had a Dell Studio XPS 1645 with an RGBLED screen with an insane gamut. It begs the question: Why aren't such screens widely available?
What about getting a T480 and replacing the screen itself? You can find a decent one for ~$400 USD, and a 1080p or WQHD screen for another $100.
As for screen availability, I think it's more to do with the fact that these are business computers. Lenovo only recently started blurring the line between their premium and business class devices.
I think every post-Haswell ThinkPad comes with a 720p screen in it's default configuration. At least up until Tx90/5 series.
Wow so many words to just say “this product isn’t for me”
I think you should stick to Apple, frankly. Every time Apple comes up with something new (or just a new software release), people come out of their sheds to warn about all the bad things that will happen.
And then almost none of those bad things happen. I've witnessed this dozens of times now, so a safe interpretation would be to assume that this time none of those things happen.
Except bad things did happen. Like their capricious application of Appstore “guidelines”; the increasing difficulty of running software on Mac where the developer won’t pay Apple a tithe; the drop in Linux support for the platform, as they locked it down more and more at hardware level; the imposition of their authentication and payment portals (and hence 30% taxes all around) on web apps... etc etc etc.
We have been effectively boiled like obedient frogs.
I love macOS but my next laptop won’t be a mac and my next phone won’t be an iPhone. Divesting from the ecosystem will be painful but we’re well past any grace period at this point.
"I love macOS but my next laptop won’t be a mac and my next phone won’t be an iPhone. Divesting from the ecosystem will be painful but we’re well past any grace period at this point. "
same here. I hope this will lead to a leap in quality in alternative mobile & desktop OSes, because at the moment the situation looks pretty bad.
I have not experienced any difficulties in installing or running apps from outside the Mac app store (if that’s what you mean by paying Apple a tithe).
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Not running 32bit code anymore die definitely happen
It was rumored for like a decade. The last 32-bit computers were sold in something like 2007-2008? High Sierra started throwing warnings when you launched 32-bit apps. In 2018, they announced Mojave would be the last version to support them. Mojave just got an update yesterday and will likely get updates for at least another year. So nobody has been forced out yet.
I'm aware end users with discontinued software were forced into some no-win choices. But as an ecosystem, it's one example where this happened and was given a ~15 year possible window and an explicit 4 year window to transition.
And it couldn't have happened sooner.
Do you want to be burdened with layers of backwards compatibility and end up like POSIX or Autoconf with provisions for things that once run on some long forgotten UNIX OS version?
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