I've been using the X230 as my daily driver for a while, and it's held up quite well running Fedora. The trackpad was a bit jittery, but that just required a quick parameter fix in Xorg.conf (I don't think that is even required anymore).
The only complaints, are that Lenovo has pulled some stunts before, mostly with their non-thinkpad line, such as Superfish. Or the recent issue with a Microsoft-specific release of one of their Yoga machines. But, stick to the models on the Linux certified list, and it should be OK.
Other than that, it would be nice to get a 3k or 4k screen, but I'm having a hard time seeing how that would be a big deal on a smaller sized screen. As long as it is above 1080 vertical (I have issues with some IDEs default layout on my current X230 with a 720 vertical resolution screen). But the newer models are available with at least 1080.
However, after all those shady stuff they did, makes it hard to go for Lenovo.
Windows is a non-starter for me, and even now Linux is just not well supported enough for a daily driver laptop. I'll gladly remap caps lock to avoid the certain bug-opening that comes with a Linux laptop.
They're plastic but personally, and in my office, we've actually found them to be more durable and easier to repair. Sure, they're different aesthetics but they both look and feel solid.
They're basically 'no-frills' laptops made by people with very different ideas about what the frills are.
This is what makes Mac perfect laptop in comparison to what you mentioned.
I do see what you saying , but I don't agree with you.
But on the other hand, I like having enough choice. And, I like the ability to customize after purchase (that is, buy with lower amount of ram, and upgrade it in a year or two). So it is just a matter of where each person puts their priorities (too bad we can't all have everything, at least not yet).
Using a mac was always involved a level of trust. They made machines that were good enough to keep buying. They were pricey but always had good connectivity, even if it wasn't always a standard connection (firewire...). But if you want a mac, its not like you have a lot of other options besides what apple puts out.
The new machine is not completely terrible though it means dongles.. Lots of dongles. Needs more RAM, the SDHC slot (every camera still uses these) and a couple plain usb3.0 ports (external drives are useful and aren't all usb C yet). I use my machine portably and "docked attached to monitors" at work. The new function keys bar is useless to me when at work.
At your desk you have some mini docking station that powers your laptop and connects it to monitors, wired mice, the Wacom tablet, the network, the thumb drive, speakers, cameras, mobile phones and everything else.
Then, on the road or at home you just have the one dongle that you plug normal USB stuff, the ethernet and maybe an SD card into. You power the computer with the adaptor it came with and not the docking station.
In this new future there is one or maybe two leads connecting the computer to stuff. It does not have a forest of leads sprouting out of every side except the front, everything is neat and less likely to break. I am not an Apple fan and I prefer mini USB to whatever it is those Apple things have. However I think Apple are right to sort the ports out properly.
The other oft-quoted problem with the new Apple machines is the max memory, I feel that some explanation is needed for that as quite a few Intel high end low power CPUs are limited to 16Gb RAM, as are their own NUC computers. So there is nothing sinister going on here, it is just a choice of low power/battery life/cooling that Intel have forced on their customers where the compromise is the 16Gb max RAM.
But, besides having a singular environment, a dock isn't so useful when you have an actual desktop computer. Especially these days when laptops top out at half the RAM and cores as a baseline desktop.
When my laptop is functioning as a laptop, I still want connectivity. Both routine (SD/USB drives, headphones, HSM if I ever find a good Free one), and all the useful ports for ad-hoc situations (eg wired ethernet). Some of these do go away with time (eg RS-232), but prematurely deprecating still-popular ports and pretending that dongles are a decent solution for portable connectivity is ridiculous.
No more docking to one side of the machine...
Obvious it doesn't run OSX. I run Linux on mine and it works great.
Doesn't really offer too much over the MBP I guess? It was faster as month earlier but the new ones should be on par. If my main OS was Linux it could be the best choice.
I wonder if my concerns about reliability is bogus. Gotta check a little more about reviews.
Windows 10 is actually pretty great, it gets out of your way for the most part. Linux runs perfectly as well. The hardware is flawless, great GPU (Nvidia), nice keyboard, and probably the best touchpad I've ever used on a Windows laptop.
I also own the XPS 13. It's great in all the same way, too, I just found that I prefer the larger screen.
Honestly for me nothing compares to the experience of a Mac trackpad in macOS (gestures, tracking, palm rejection, etc). I got it a year ago and had to wait months for Linux support of the Skylake CPU to get mainlined. Battery life is much worse under Linux than Windows neither of which compare to macOS and the default Windows 10 install is garbage using Software raid even if you only have one drive.
The Windows 10 drivers and bios updates also took months to resolve. When I first received it it had loud fan noises when charging and buggy suspend and resume. Also I had intermittent blue screens until I did a fresh reinstall without the raid setup.
Sure its cheaper (I got mine for $1600) and some people may find the hardware equal to the MacBook (I wouldn't say so but it's a matter of taste I guess?) But, in no way does the set it and forget mentality apply.
Of course if you are thinking about running Linux as your daily this may not be a big factor for you to begin with.
Edit: I wonder if the people who have had good experiences with it have never owned a modern MacBook. I see some comments who match my experience directly for instance the comment that mentions no automatic brightness/keyboard backlight controls. Something you don't even think about until you try to switch away from the Mac.
Best laptop I have seen yet. No complaints. Great screen, color calibration, cpu, size, weight, good keyboard when on the lap (could be better on a desk), smooth trackpad.
Battery lasts about 4 hours of programming work, 6 or so browsing.
What horror stories have you heard?
Maybe those were isolated incidents. Also there are a lot of XPS models, gotta check for a specific one I guess.
Trackpad is excellent - responsive and smooth. two finger scroll, pinch to zoom and just normal delay and sensitivity is great. Not sure what more one needs (I don't use 3 or 4 fingers really).
Never had coil whine.
FWIW, I've read a lot about the 'coil whine' too, but neither of my XPS laptops have that problem. Not sure what to make of it.
I rarely go 3 hours without charging anyway, so this wasn't a problem for me.
The 1920x1080 version is supposed to have better battery life.
It's mostly good, but 1) doesn't have an ethernet port and 2) only one of the USB ports delivers enough power to connect a USB ethernet adapter thing.
Keyboard's a bit rubbish, but then laptop keyboards just are.
http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-stealth-...
I hope Acer is going to update it with newest Nvidia/AMD cards which will make it a perfect graphics dock choice, not so large and expensive as Razer, AKiTiO Thunder3 and other ridiculous boxes.
That might happen soon, since Thinderbolt 3 port has come to the mass with Kaby Lake CPUs (looks like no addition chips needed like it was with prev Intel's CPUs).
That said, I've not used tools that open windows so I've been all command line.
Additionally, the terminal that comes with it is pretty crappy, but my internet searches don't turn up any way to get a better terminal that works with it. I also can't figure out where the Linux Subsystem filesystem is stored on my drive.
If you are willing to build it yourself, [HyperTerm](https://hyper.is/#installation) is good.
For running GUI apps from within the subsystem, take a look at:
[1]: https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/WinCoder/XMING--Bash-on-Ubun...
[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/4ye1gq/xfce_using...
[3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/4ycxaz/the_new_l...
I think the relevant Google keyword for this is "vcxsrv", an X server running under Windows. I saw something about people using it in WSL to launch regular Unix applications talking to X, but don't remember where.
Now, if we give that a couple of years to mature. I might go back to Windows too. Seems like a reasonable setup if it works perfectly.
Wait a few years for USB-C to become a more widely used port. I can't imagine that Apple won't soon move the iPhone to USB-C (or they're waiting for wireless charging to get better).
I think that is why this story is getting so much press. People have been waiting for Apple to refresh Macs with something meaningful and all we got is a digital menu bar that could turn out to be a total gimmick (or developers never adopt it) and a substantial price increase from the previous generation. And on top of that, it just appears that Apple has no cohesive strategy for how Macs fit into the Apple ecosystem.
I have been using Macs since the 90s but this is the first time I'm thinking about switching to PC hardware and just running Linux. I have the 2015 model so I'll probably just wait for that to die and then switch.
Do you agree with what people are saying about the new MacBook Pros? What are your specific needs? Does it look like the right machine for you for the next few years? What are you going to be using the machine for? Given the list you've provided, I think it's likely the MacBook Pro would work for you. But like I said, it matters what you're using it for.
Yours may not be the same as those who believe the new MacBooks are not right for them. It's really what's right for you.
I don't get the battery life, and I imagine some tweaking would be required to do so.
I've not had a problem with trackpads on linux, after accounting for the 'set up synclient to run on startup so I don't accidentally scroll' that's been annoyingly necessary forever.
In the end, with Sager I get more memory + more max memory, faster CPU, larger SSD + secondary TB HDD for quite a bit less than a maxed out MBP. I haven't compared against the new specs yet, but I imagine it'll be consistent. My machine also typically outperforms mac-using coworkers for common dev tasks, but this is anecdotal and not measured.
http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-lapt...
On another note, System76 has great hardware support...but outsources their hardware to Clevo:
I have owned both. Battery life on the Dell, even with the 4K touchscreen shocked me (in a good way).
Both come with Ubuntu pre-installed.
You can also consider running an OSX VM, but the same licensing issues apply, plus consider the fact that OSX guests on VMWare don't support graphics acceleration. You also have to patch VMWare to support a non OSX host.
[1] Hardware compatibility list: http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Most people use the OS installers downloaded from their own App store account and make a boot key so those should be safe too.
TonyMac makes a regularly updated list of hardware components [1] (mostly desktops) that should provide the fewest compatibility issues for those who are interested in making a Hackintosh.
On the other hand, I really agree with your points about large touchpad, good battery and portability. Also include SSD and the ability to swap out the CD/DVD for another disk drive.
Beyond that, I think it's just some of the subtle ease of use things. I strongly prefer OS X's implementation of virtual desktops over anything I've used on Linux; the UX is just smoother. All in all, all the Linux desktops just end up feeling a bit more fiddly to use, which leaves me feeling like I'd rather have Aqua than any Linux desktop as my main UI.
Installing userland software also gets a bit obnoxious on Linux, owing to there being eleventy-seven different package managers to deal with, none of which include everything you might want, so you're inevitably stuck dealing with some bits manually, which, again, is just an annoyance. And heck, 20something years since dpkg first hit my radar I'm still having to fiddle with dependency conflicts, which is something that I've never experienced with OS X style bundles. I'll gladly swap the minor loss of disk space that comes with not relying on shared libraries for the convenience of drag-and-drop installation whenever possible.
I find the best Virtual Desktop (Workspaces) implementation to be that of i3wm. I can spin up as many as I want, on the fly, using a keycombo and even ask apps to open up on a specific workspace.
[1] http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-stealth
By the way, the XPS 13 has been upgraded to intel's latest (Kaby Lake?), but the XPS 15 hasn't yet. It's probably coming any day, so if you're thinking about purchasing you might want to wait a couple weeks.
Come this time next year 90% will be using the new MBP because it's a damn good machine and developing in MacOS is simply more comfortable.
I need a new laptop, my older MBP had some unfortunate accidents. I tried to find a better one than the new MBP. I honestly could not. This new MBP seems to be the best ever laptop I can buy at this moment. I guess it would be better if it had 32gb ram option or a newer gen CPU. Still, nothing else seems to come close.
If you don't agree, please help me with my decision:
Any suggestions?