Then I actually had to use one for work.
I'll never go back.
It's the little things that are not so little: 1) The wake speed 2) The battery life 3) The overall comfort and feel of the keys and the trackpad compared to ANYTHING I've ever used before from Lenovo or Dell.
I can live in Mac mode and build almost anything targeted to a *nix platform natively.
And if I need to do anything for Windows, I just use Boot Camp.
> And if I need to do anything for Windows, I just use Boot Camp.
I tried to do this in Parallels, but it just didn't work. Turns out live video composition and broadcasting needs the bare metal.
There are reasonable substitutes for Visio now, but damn a MS Project substitute is needed (and no, that thing in LibreOffice doesn't really work).
I'm glad people have a choice. I just don't understand why I get crucified every time I state my preference.
You mention 1080p. I believe the high-res displays (think 4k-ish/Retina) are still super expensive, even for non-Apple machines and they make a huge difference for me. For professionals working with print, it's an absolute bliss to "not see pixels" anymore and I generally love it for just reading super crisp text. Then there's the "little things" that even fewer high end laptops get right and Apple tends to nail (like the glass-surface trackpad).
I don't get the "open ended" pricing (>$2500), either. I don't get why versions of the same base model with $200 worth of better hardware cost $500 more, that's the Apple idiot-tax. But the existence of high-end laptops alone? Dude, I spend like half my day in front of that thing, for years. People don't raise an eye brow on you spending +/- 25% on a car yet I'd argue for many people, you get way more use out of a laptop. It's worth paying a little extra, IMO.
Yea, i do nothing with graphics/print but the crisp text is very important to me. All day in the Terminal screen, the crisp letters really help reduce eye fatigue, which is at a premium these days.
It's not so bad these days. If you want a comparison, you can look at Dell displays. On the 5510 and probably a couple other models, you can upgrade from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 for $299.
Comparatively, this is a better screen to the one provided by Apple. Apple's 13" MBP comes in at a lower 2560x1600 resolution, or 4.1m pixels to Dell's 8.3m, or for the 15" MBP you get 2880x1800 at 5.2m.
I don't have a macbook either, fwiw. My work laptop is a Dell Precision M4800 (provided by IT), and it seems decent. My home laptop is an old toughbook, which is ugly and the trackpad sucks, but I could use it to bludgeon someone while looking them up on linkedin, so I think it's pretty neat.
I can add, though, that the hinge in my T450s is by no means as cheap and flexible as those in a rMBP or any slew of other Windows laptops. I can open it to 180 degrees or anywhere in-between and it stays there even while I shake the laptop (far better than the rMBP I had for work and previous laptops I've owned). The outer casing of my (AFAIK carbon fiber/fiberglass) T450s also feels firmer and stronger than that of a rMBP where the metal outer shell flexes, probably due to the lack of a solid skeleton support system inside. These little things just inspire confidence in me that few other products can, personally.
The trackpad may be good quality, but it is massive. Seriously, my hands naturally rest on the pad while i type, which causes all sorts of weird behavior because my palms are mashing all over the "mouse". Furthermore, Apple reduces the "action" of the keys and trackpad press to near zero, what!? The new non-button-bottons of the Macbook Pro Retina are annoying as hell.
I'm frustrated because i don't want to deal with bad Linux laptop drivers, so i want to buy another Macbook Pro Ret, but the damn thing is just crap (to me personally). I'm very frustrated at the UX of that new book.
And lets not even talk about removing the magnetic charge port for a grand total of two usb c ports. I have no clue what Apple is doing these days.
edit: removed space
The trackpad I haven't noticed any problems with while typing...but it does make a really annoying and hollow sounding "pong" sound with each click. I thought it was just me, but apparently the sound is something all the other users experience also. Maybe I'm picky, but I expect really expensive kit to not feel cheap.
The ports are a pain, but work bought me the usual type-a-to-c adapters, and an LG monitor that uses usb type C by default.
All in all..I want my thinkpad back, but some people might like this new machine, who knows? I think if they buy it with their own money, they are a lot more likely to tell themselves they like it, even if they do not.
A bit like the difference between driving a 30 year old Porsche that needs constant maintenance and is delicate as can be. No one would call that car cheap, but I'd opt for the Tesla Model S and ignore the brand loyalists.
Got it refurbished from Apple saved a couple hundred bucks. It did have a fan problem right before the warranty expired -- when I sent it in for repair, they ended up replacing (with no charge) huge amounts of it, in addition to the fan problem I specified (replaced the entire graphics board and logic board, as well as entirely new display, because their diagnostics found problems I have no idea what but I'm not complaining -- I think the moral is always take a macbook into the apple store for a checkup right before the warranty expires, come up with something small to say there's a problem with, have them run all their diagnostics, be friendly and polite to the apple desk person).
I'm pretty darn happy with it. It's still plenty fast enough 3-4 years later. (Looking it up, it's dual core i5, but I've never really wanted for more cpu; I'm not a gamer though it must be said). I think when I bought it a newer model had _just_ been released, and price reductions on the model I got.
So I dunno, it seems pretty comparable (some things better, some things worse, but a pretty similar machine) to the thinkpad you purchased for a comparable price, really, doesn't it? Not neccesarily better, not neccesarily worse, depends on what you're looking for, similar price.
I am not sure I like the direction macbooks have gone since then, in price-to-features, it's true. I'm not alone, which is why Apple is trying to assuage mac owners.
> I don't get the attraction of luxury laptop lines at this point.
Apple doesn't make those anymore. It makes machines with parts glued together, and drives soldered to the board, whose GPUs overheat and die after a few months.
You want either a daily driver car or a ricer.
(I don't disagree - Apple used to manage to make computers that were a rare a meld of all kinds - the eminently upgradeable PowerMac G4 with the hinged door! - but not any longer)
Well if that's what you're into...
http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-pro
One downside is that the battery life is crap (5 hours or so)...and the base price is $3600.
In my daily home life outside of work, having an i7 over an i5 doesn't add value for me because I'm just messing around. I think it all comes down to need. I didn't get a MBP as a status symbol, I got one because I wanted a machine that ran macOS alongside Windows without building a Hackintosh. I do think plenty of college students get MBP's because everyone else has them when in reality, they won't need something like a MBP for their coursework likely ever.
That said, this is my last MBP. The changes Apple are making aren't exactly things I align with. I can only buy the pioneer argument so much. I think my next purchase is going to be a Thinkpad or a Surface Book Pro.
[my friend also does a demonstration where he shuts down the lid of his running Thinkpad and walks on it, then opens up the lid and keeps working... yay exoskeleton :]
It also doesn't run OS X, and lots of other stuff. If you try to understand it as "value for money", then there are far better computers for number crunching that are way cheaper than a Mac. Instead with Mac you get lots of marginal returns, that, if you have the money can appreciate, and they are all focused on things other than raw performance per dollar.
Weight, size, construction, design, no crap ware, magsafe (rip), great trackpad, first to get hi-dpi screens, first to get modern more powerful ports, first to ditch legacy stuff, and good battery life (despite some recent problems it has been traditionally better than the PC competition, even for units 2x the size). Plus a whole ecosystem that has the same values, of smartphone, tablet, watch, desktop, Cloud services, etc. And a great resale value.
Also Apple traditionally uses it bargaining/money to order the best parts of what it orders (quality assurance wise). They don't get the most powerful Nvidia, for example, but for the model of Nvidia they do get, they get the most careful produced units. Same for less/no stuck pixels on the monitors, etc. Don't have an exact reference now, but I've read that from 2 different people working for other OEMs/suppliers. Of course its also inevitable for every product run that runs in the millions that they also get some duds as they had in the past. The screens on MBPr's or iMacs have for example, have consistently been top of the crop, with respect to color, brightness, etc compared to other (cheaper or not) laptops. Compared to dedicated pro screens that cost the same as the whole MBPr just for the screen, no, but that's not the point. The point is in the balance.
Even not having to bother with 200 customization options is a feature for some.
About the "it's not thin and weights 1.5 pounds more". This might seem like OK tradeoff to you, but is enough to drive some people crazy, like this guy:
I’m have to admit being a bit baffled by how nobody else seems to have done what Apple did with the Macbook Air – even several years after the first release, the other notebook vendors continue to push those ugly and clunky* things. Yes, there are vendors that have tried to emulate it, but usually pretty badly. I don’t think I’m unusual in preferring my laptop to be thin and light. I’m personally just hoping that I’m ahead of the curve in my strict requirement for “small and silent”. It’s not just laptops, btw – Intel sometimes gives me pre-release hardware, and the people inside Intel I work with have learnt that being whisper-quiet is one of my primary requirements for desktops too. I am sometimes surprised at what leaf-blowers some people seem to put up with under their desks. I want my office to be quiet. The loudest thing in the room – by far – should be the occasional purring of the cat. And when I travel, I want to travel light. A notebook that weighs more than a kilo is simply not a good thing (yeah, I’m using the smaller 11″ macbook air, and I think weight could still be improved on, but at least it’s very close to the magical 1kg limit).* (Linus Torvalds)
I agree with that. Buying a PC is still a terrible experience. Lenovo alone has more than 20 different lines of laptops.
What's really bad is that none of the big manufacturers is able to have useful website, so figuring out what you might be interested in is needlessly painful and involves external communities.
It's not about being ultra-thin as much as the quality and experience of macOS over anything else.
VNC, you ask? As our product has matured, the build has gotten slower, so my local vmware vm is useless. The remote xeon is pretty iffy too (and it is not three years out of date like apple's comparable offering).
Writing on macos and shipping the code is a non-starter, and I like to be able to cut and paste urls / download things into my linux working directory directly from firefox.
Worse, it is not like some things improved while others regressed. Take the mail and calendar clients (the other programs I actually use) for example. Other than waiting, there is no way to dismiss the "you've got mail" notifications without opening the email (thus borking my vnc session again). Since apple is deep into the minimalism cult, I know they are organizationally incapable of putting an X on the popup.
That is the story of my $2800 VNC client with buggy keyboard, crashy kernel and iffy mail client. At least it has an escape key, reasonable keyboard play, and good battery life.
In apple's defense, I don't know of and better options that work out of the box. Microsoft and google perform way too much user surveillance, and Ubuntu Unity (i.e. Dell XPS developer edition) broke the alt key. When did desktop/laptop software start sucking so badly?
Four years ago I spilled water on my 2009 17" MBP (RIP) and Apple wanted $1200 for the repair. Instead, I spent ~$1300, including three-year accident-protection insurance where they show up at your house THE NEXT DAY, on a Thinkpad T530 and I couldn't be happier with it. Quad-core i7, discrete Nvidia GPU, 15" 1080p display, 2 USB 2.0 ports, 2 USB 3.0 ports, ethernet, displayport, firewire, DVD drive, 300GB HDD. I've since upgraded to a 500GB SSD (and put the old HDD where the DVD drive was) and to 16GB of RAM. Due to the internal metal frame, I'm sure I could drop the thing repeatedly without consequence.
Yeah, it's not thin and weighs 1.5 pounds more than a 15" MBP. The extra-capacity battery I ordered it with is losing some capacity, but good thing I can just pop it out for a new one with the flick of a switch. This computer will still be kicking ass in four more years.
EDIT: I dug up the invoice: http://imgur.com/a/cT55A . $1380 including the three-year warranty/accident-insurance. Apparently I can put a mobile broadband card in this thing, cool!
Further edit: Perhaps I overstated in my first sentence. I really don't mean to put down Macs. I loved my 17" MBP and the 13" company-issued MBP I used at an internship in 2013. Their screens, even pre-retina, are beautiful. The OS and hardware worked perfectly together, e.g. smooth touchpad actions like scrolling and zooming. Though I haven't used the new machines everyone is complaining about, my experiences with Apple hardware have only been great. But what I value in a computer just doesn't align with the value that premium ultra-thin laptops provide.