I have a Mac at work. When I decided my personal Mac needed replacement, I decided to take a serious look at Windows. Ended up choosing Windows because I couldn't justify buying older generation hardware (at Apple prices). I made sure to buy locally so I could return it if I hated it.

I am impressed with Ubuntu on Windows. Some bugs, but overall I can see this working for me. Since I use Ubuntu in production, the Linux environment is closer to production than a Mac shell.

I have felt lately, though, that the Mac vs Windows vs Linux debate is getting less relevant with most things being in a web browser. The diminishing requirement for Windows around 5 years ago caused me to switch to Mac. And now back to Windows.

I can see myself buying a Mac again, though. Maybe even a Chromebook.

Why not just use Ubuntu full time? I'm probably going to build a Linux desktop for my next home computer (Mac user for 10 years).

What is "Ubuntu on Windows"?

Are you using that new fangled Linux literally in Windows thing I heard of? How's that going?

He's probably referring to "Windows Subsystem for Linux" which is a compatibility layer for Windows 10 that allows you to run unmodified Ubuntu binaries. It is also called "Ubuntu on Windows" since the userspace part is based on Ubuntu [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux

[2] https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/03/30/ubuntu-on-windows-the...

I use Linux Mint for most of my dev work, but thought I'd give the new Ubuntu subsystem on Windows a try yesterday side it came with the Windows 10 Anniversary update. It seems to work as advertised.

My only complaint thus far is that all the packages that you can get via apt-get seem really ancient. I had to go through hell building a lot of stuff myself to get anything remotely recent running.

After much pain, I finally got our product built and running, ran it then tried to connect to it and it core dumped. That's probably my fault I guess. I haven't dug into that yet, but there must be some platform difference I'm not aware of.

Anyway, it seems pretty stable in general although a little quirky. Having direct access between the Windows file system and the *nix side is pretty cool too.

I don't think I'll be switching to it full time but it is certainly interesting.

WSL Uses Ubuntu 14.04 with no plans to upgrade it soon. Some people have had success upgrading to 16.04, but I haven't run into enough recency issues to justify trying.

It still has a lot of rough edges, but they seem to be actively working on it, so I'm hopeful this leads to a virtuous cycle of more developers using it and more investment from Microsoft.

> all the packages that you can get via apt-get seem really ancient

I think this is an Ubuntu issue, even on stand-alone Ubuntu. I assume the subsystem lets you add PPAs like in vanilla Ubuntu?

Actually I take that back. I did get GCC-6 installed via PPA. Not sure why the other ones had issues.

It does, but for some reason it didn't seem to work. I was totally unable to install later versions of GCC, CMake or Node. Had to manually install from releases or build from source.

Maybe I screwed something up, but I really did try.

"Since I use Ubuntu in production, the Linux environment is closer to production than a Mac shell."

Docker

Oooh yes, I love Docker. Right now, I do most of my dev work outside Docker (because I don't want to rebuild the image every time I change a file..unless there's a way?). I do use Docker at intervals to make sure everything still works.

The shell being closer to production was more for familiarity sake. For me, I used to think I was going to be Mac for a long time because "Mac has a bash shell." Windows has a bash shell. In practice, I mostly use the ssh command! :)

Oh and the console window in Windows is now resizable! That drove me crazy.

> because I don't want to rebuild the image every time I change a file..unless there's a way?

I believe the current strategy is to have a container that contains your full build environment, push your source files in by mounting a folder, and then use file watchers to automatically rebuild/rerun.

How do you run Ubuntu binaries on Mac by using Docker? As far as I know it's not a virtualization layer.

Docker on Mac runs in a VM, either by one of the traditional virtualisation solutions (Virtualbox, VMWare, Parallels) or via xhyve. The VM acts as a Docker server, so the client on the mac side just passes options to the Docker VM. See: https://docs.docker.com/engine/installation/mac/

Docker now also has a native Mac client that doesn't require docker-machine

What does "native" mean in this context? The Mac client still runs containers in a Linux VM.

Thanks both! I believe the native Mac announcement is what put me off track.

Which gets pretty bad the moment you need to use shared volumes.

I thought it was clear this event was going to be iPhone and Watch only?

And no, my 2013 MBP still works just fine and probably will for years.

Yeah until it just decides to stop working... I have a 2010/2011 MBP that is literally falling apart, the battery is dying again and I already replaced it about 3 years ago, not to mention the two additional chargers I've had to buy when they begin to fray. Also, the screen joint is getting pretty loose and the computer gets so hot it's unusable at times. Meanwhile my other computers are a ragtag group of laptops that are 5-10 years old and they're still going strong with very few serious issues.

I guess I'm in the minority, but if my Macbook started falling apart tomorrow, I'd just get a new one right now. I don't really care about any new technology or processors—2013 MBP is more than fast enough for me—enough to wait or get frustrated. Some rumored features like the OLED bar don't sound good at all.

That said, if I bought one tomorrow and a new one came out before the "no questions asked" return policy ends, I'd switch them.

Seconded. There is nothing earth shattering Apple could release that would make a Mac purchased today unusable for the next 2-3 years (at least). My wife's MBA from 2011 is still humming along! If it dies, we'll just pick up a refurbished model from Apple, same as my MBA workstation.

I have a MBP that I bought in 2014, 6 years after I bought my first MBP. I only got the new one because I messed up the main board while installing a new batter on the old one.

I am hoping that I am satisfied with my current one for the next couple of years at least, especially now that we are in the in-between. Sadly, I think that the OLED bar is going to be a deal breaker for me.

As much as I don't want to, I am also considering a Windows laptop. The Gigabyte Aero 14 looks really good due to the long battery life that I've come to expect from the MacBook Pro.

Can definitely recommend the ASUS ZenBook line as well. I got one this year, chopped the internal 512GB SSD in half and have Windows and Linux running. It's a beast of a machine with a high DPI touch screen. Real pleasure to use and very good value.

I have an early 2009 MacBook Pro which I use every day and it works perfectly fine. I had to replace the battery once, and now I get like an hour use of it, but it still works. No problems with heat, hinges work perfectly....I seriously don't know any other laptop which would be in such great shape after 7 years of use.

I sold a 2011 MBP to my friend when I upgraded. He has been very happy with it. Neither of us (as far as I know) took special precautions to take care of it.

On the other hand I use a late 2008 model and it works perfectly fine. The battery is non existent though, but I don't care to buy a new one.

>And no, my 2013 MBP still works just fine and probably will for years.

Mine does too, but the lack of hardware updates is disconcerting enough that my next hardware(laptop/desktop) purchase won't be from Apple. I really like OS X/macOS, but the overall attitude seems to be that they just don't care, so I'll look to something that does care a little more.

That's fine, it is their (or their board's?) choice on what to pursue, but I don't have to buy either. Their priorities have shifted away from macOS and the hardware that runs it. If those priorities haven't shifted, they should consider a retreat or some meeting to determine why fans like myself and many others in this thread feel that way. They should ask themselves why it is taking so long between updates to the Mac Pro, etc. They should ask themselves why they have "Pro" in the name but then leave the hardware out of date (especially since its own name kinda implies it is for power users that want powerful machines).

@Pinboard's joke on twitter: "We’re two releases from the point where it will make sense to upgrade from a Mac Pro to an iPhone".

https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/773593425169960960

A couple of years back I was going to buy a maxed-out quad-core mini-Mac but knowing that a new model was about to be announced, I waited.

They dropped the quad-core and it was almost immediately unavailable.

Now, in all fairness this was because a quad-core with the newer CPU required a different motherboard to the dual-core, so this was an Intel/economies of scale issue.

However there is still no quad-core option available.

I got tired of waiting and put together a (much cheaper) Gentoo Linux box.

I was then looking at buying a MacBook Pro laptop, but couldn't see the point in paying a premium for older hardware. I bought a Chromebook Pixel instead.

I am not regretting either decision.

I bought the iPhone SE because I knew it would be the last iPhone with a headphone jack. I don't expect Apple to have a change of heart so no doubt when the time comes to replace my iPhone I will have to buy Android.

It's a shame. Apple used to care about users because it needed to look after them. That made good engineering a priority. Nowadays it believes in good marketing instead. And so for example we have ever thinner iPhones that mechanically flex and eventually cause screen issues if they don't just break outright.

With Apple you pay a premium price for a premium product. It's no longer a premium product - but it's still a premium price.

Great esthetics at the expense of good engineering has been Apple's way for a long time. Whenever there is a choice between making something look nice vs, making it be durable or last long, they opt for it to look nice. If they can make you fall in love with a device, you won't mind paying to replace it when it breaks.

Tell me, what is the logic behind buying a beautiful but fragile iPhone if you must encase it in an Otter Box just to survive daily use and the occasional drop? Who cares how thin it is or about the hue of the rose gold if it's buried inside a thick case?

I read a story about how Apple despised the look of Dell charging cables with their thick cable reinforcers everywhere a cable interfaced with a plug or electrical component. So Apple made thin cables with no reinforcers that would easily get damaged from normal use, and people would have to go buy more cables.

Why have iPhone screens been so fragile? Because they are pretty. All my iPhone friends would keep using their cracked phones because they didn't want to pay to fix them. What's so pretty about walking around with a cracked screen?

The world was a better place when Nokia engineering was a dominant influence. Attractive durability is superior to what Apple sells.

lol what? i'm not sure where you get that sentiment but apple has always been about good engineering. sure they've had their design flaws and mistakes, but more often than not they are pushing the boundaries of what can be done(minus what i consider their latest phone offerings)

i think you're forgetting in the age of plastic laden laptops the things like the air were considered impressive engineering wise. overpriced, sure. but solid. the built quality of my old macbook pro was leaps and bounds beyond any pc equivalent at the time. apple trackpads/screens and touch sensitivity have still yet to be matched.

you can criticize apple's pricing, proprietary lock-in and a host of other things, but i think quality of engineering is definitely not one of them.

Except that Macbooks are not that expensive, at least in Europe and compared to other premium alternatives like Thinkpad, DELL and HP.

I thought a pixel was quite slow per dollar.

Probably not, but I would like to see a new TB monitor. I actually replaced mine with a Dell 27" 4k. You can find them under $500, and I bought mine for something crazy like $350 I think (open box at MicroCenter)

My late 2013 rMBP is still great, but I do admit I'm eyeing an XPS 15 (or similarly spec'ed machine) and putting Ubuntu on it. For the price of a 15" MBP, twice the RAM, touch screen, 4K display, etc seems quite appealing.

Apple users used to be proud of their over priced trailing edge hardware (usually a year or two behind mainstream hardware) now they're like refugees clinging to a sinking ship, just hoping their machine limps along until Apple decides to pad their bottom line by releasing the next shiny "must have" like an OLED touch bar they can use to impress their barista.

Please come visit some mid-size or large tech companies in the Bay Area who make a ton of the Internet. Most of them are Mac shops. Even if not officially, at conferences and companies, it's like 99% MacBooks. Engineers aren't usually buying these themselves, but having one for work definitely makes a lot of people consider getting a personal MacBook.

And the rest of us are loving it.

Oh you really captured that well! :-)

I have had a couple of generations of Macbook Air until this year. I felt like the Air was lagging, and read rumors about it possibly getting phased out completely, so this encouraged me to move on. I switched to a ThinkPad X1 Carbon and now run Fedora on it. So far no regrets.

I'm currently searching for a new laptop and the X1 Carbon is my frontrunner at the moment.

Did you go with the 1080p or 1440p screen? I've never had a laptop with a very good screen (have a nice monitor for my desktop though) and I'm not sure how well higher resolutions will translate to a smaller screen size.

Your experiences would be a great help to me!

My apologies for taking so long to reply - I'm not the best at checking my comment threads on HN. I basically specced up all the way since I expect this laptop to be with me for the next several years, and went with the 1440p IPS display. To be honest this is not something I usually pay great attention to - I don't use this laptop for gaming, only dev/browsing/casual use. On the whole I thought my 2013 Macbook Air screen looked better. I didn't boot up the ThinkPad and think "Wow, I'm so glad I got the 1440p screen" (in fact I didn't even remember which one I chose to be honest).

Part of lack of wow factor may be the fact that when I first uninstalled Windows and switched to Linux my resolution in general was all messed up - some apps would take up too much screen space, others would be tiny. There was no consistency and it ruined the experience (one miraculous dnf update day this seems to have been largely resolved, but I still do not find anything special about the 1440p display experience on the laptop).

Shame about delay, can't wait for new Macbook Pro ,soft function keys a great idea, I use macro keys extensively on steelseries keyboard. They're probably waiting for new Intel Kaby Lake processor due v soon. Mind you my late 2013 Max Spec MBP 1TB ssd 16GB Ram MBP still runs everything I throw at it perfectly, including huge 30MB spreadsheets on 64 bit Office 16 Windows 10 bootcamp or huge Postgres databases on OSX whilst driving 2 * 32" high res external monitors. Build quality is stunning way beyond any windows laptop I've ever encountered, still looks brand new.

I'm hanging in there waiting for HP to release their business class ChromeBooks. I believe they will be metal case, light and fast. Should be sometime this month.

Apple is looking more and more like a megacorp as the Steve Jobs DNA fades away.

Windows 10 just doesn't appeal to me. And most new notebooks have various problems running Linux. Plus, the battery life on most notebooks sucks when compared to MBAs.

I get about 12 hrs battery life with everything working out of the box on my xps 13 with Ubuntu 16.04 and kernel 4.6.

HP Chromebook 13 is already out and awesome.

This is why i built a hackintosh instead. Apple simply cannot sell me a machine with my current configuration.

mac rumors are speculating next month.

Maybe, historically updates have happened in spring/summer. Only once did they announce a new MacBook Air in October. Same with the Retina MacBook Pro.

Moved away from Apple for 'real' work years a ago since I really needed stuff like a decent NVIDIA and lots of RAM. Still sticking with them for laptops though since I've yet to find a laptop than can match the MBA in overall design and quality.

Just get a ThinkPad. This X230 is the best machine I've owned in terms of build quality.

I stopped giving money to Apple when they started gluing batteries and soldering memories. That's just disrespectful both to the environment and to the end customer.

"lagging behind and seems not to care" seems a little exaggerated.

If the rumors are true, they're coming out with new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iPad, and perhaps a new Mac Pro in October, which is just in one month.