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Ask HN: Disappointed by the new Macbook, what alternatives do we have?

124 points by Maran ↗ HN
I've been very happy with my 2012 Macbook Pro Retina and was looking forward to a worthy successor. However the unveiling of the new Macbook was a big letdown for me. Everything that made the Macbook "Pro" seems to be removed. Enough has been said about the topic already what I want to do here is look at what alternatives there are.

So my question for you is; Which laptops, around the price point of your average Macbook Pro, come close to the build quality of the Macbook and use hardware that's greatly supported in Linux.

Extra kudos if somebody can recommend me a terminal on-par with iTerm. Out of all my apps I think I would miss iTerm the most.

143 comments

[ 52.5 ms ] story [ 3719 ms ] thread
wyclif
I'd also miss iTerm.

Have you looked at the Dell XPS 13 Dev edition, the Razer Blade Pro, the Lenovo X1 Carbon, Lenovo T Series, or the Asus UX305F?

adamnemecek
I'm in the same situation and right now leaning towards a beefy hackintosh desktop + maybe one of the small macbooks. It's such a pain though.
dwightgunning
This looks to be the direction I'll be heading too.
jftuga
Would using one effect your Apple Developer status if you are seen using one of these?
ohazi
Lenovo T or X series, ASUS Zenbook series.
jsiepkes
I bought a HP zbook studio G3, looks nice, not heavy and can deal with 32GB RAM ;-).
chillacy
You might want to be more specific, about the "pro" part that you want which is no longer in the MBP. For instance others have pointed out that the 16GB limitation is in all notebooks which use the same intel chipset and low voltage ram, so you'll have to sacrifice battery life for more memory. That's fine for some folks but not for others.
icebraining
you'll have to sacrifice battery life for more memory

Or get a bigger battery. Not all laptops are stuck with a non-removable battery that must fit a certain size.

chillacy
Then you're sacrificing space. Look, that's a perfectly fine tradeoff, but OP didn't mention what tradeoffs he was willing to make.

For me: I would rather have a smaller and lighter computer since I travel. The battery doesn't have to last more than 5 hours since I'm either out and traveling or at home and plugged in, but if it is plugged in it has to be able to drive pixels on an external monitor.

viraptor
If you want more power Lenovo T. If you want something closer to air, Lenovo X.
alfanick
If you want absolute power - Lenovo P50 (though P50s is closer to MBPr)
wyclif
I used to be a big ThinkPad guy, but I'm spoiled now. The thought of having to work with a Lenovo trackpad depresses me.
dom0
Use the trackpoint instead? Honestly the trackpoint on TPs has been a major, maybe the biggest, deterrent for me to abstain from ultrabooks.
jpalomaki
P50s is just dual-core.

P50 is quite thick, 24-29mm. I'm using T440p and the height is a bit annoying when typing.

In addition to the missing quad-core slim models, another annoyance with Lenovo is that at least the online configurators are still offering just 512GB SSD. It is of course possible to throw in what you want, but if it is not official Lenovo stuff, then it is not covered by the onsite warranty.

NietTim
I'm really skeptical about Lenovo because of the proprietary software issues they've had, even read things about bioses with sketchy stuff in them which couldn't be flashed and such.
pritambaral
Lenovo has (at least) two lines of laptop products, one consumer and one enterprise.

The consumer line is shit. It's branded just "Lenovo", but Lenovo themselves call it "IdeaPad".

The enterprise line is good. It's branded "ThinkPad", or "Lenovo ThinkPad", and every unit in this line is bound to have the label "ThinkPad" on its body prominently displayed. The two series of laptops your parent referred to are both ThinkPad series.

And the sketchy stuff you refer to all happened in the IdeaPad line, no ThinkPads were affected. Lenovo has historically run the ThinkPad division separately with some autonomy granted.

viraptor
Op asked about a laptop with linux compatibility. I'm assuming that's going to be installed from scratch without any marketing/upselling software from Lenovo.
k__
the zenbooks look like a good alternative a
idlewords
What about a 2015 MBP? I also have a 2012 model, with a little water damage, and am seriously thinking of upgrading to 2015 and then giving Apple one more upgrade cycle to come to its senses.
x0x0
My guess is there may be decent sales around thanksgiving as vendors look to clear last year's stock. I'm mostly hoping saner people prevail at apple too. Or you could learn to type on an ipad, which is clearly the future of computing!
threeseed
Saner people did prevail at Apple. That's why for a laptop that typically lasts 5+ years they went with USB-C to replace the other dozen antiquated ports.
idlewords
Some of us were using those antiquated ports.
threeseed
I know. I'm one of them.

But I will always applaud Apple for when they do things like this because through sheer attrition they will move the industry forward.

The iMac is largely what made USB a success. And I am hoping this will make a single connector world a success.

idlewords
A single-connector world is not an end in itself. The reason anyone finds it appealing is because it means people won't have to carry a forest of adapters and connectors, or worry about incompatible devices.

But that's what Apple is now forcing us to do if we buy their new laptop. USB-A is going to be around for years to come, as is HDMI. I'm not going to throw out my extremely expensive Thunderbolt display because it uses a heretical connector. I am not going to refuse to speak at a conference because the projector doesn't work with my new machine.

The basic requirement of a professional machine is that it let us get our work done. This is just design wank.

x0x0
As a wag on twitter said -- let's call it a courage of cables that we can haul around with us!
x0x0
There was nothing wrong with keeping a magsafe port, or throwing one thunderbolt 2 connector in there. That doesn't preclude a bunch of usbc ports.

ps -- for me personally, we're discussing a bonus $500 of cables/adapters/chargers that Apple is blithely demanding I replace.

douche
Damn near anything. For the markup on equivalent specs that Apple commands, you can often get two laptops from other manufacturers.
vetinari
That's not really true, if you configure equivalent rMBP and Thinkpad, the Thinkpad is going to cost you more.
et-al
What's the use case?

If it's just for general web development, my plan is to buy a used 2015 MBP, but with AppleCare until mid-2018 or later, and re-roll the dice in two years.

jetbeau
Whoever builds an easy hackintosh with metabox level specs will have my business
Philipp__
No terminal is on par with iTerm. I was using Linux and *BSD for years, used many terminals, and of all iTerm is bread and butter (and with that font rendering and retina screen, nothing comes close). I would recommend to evaluate your needs, but be objective! If you can live with 16GB of RAM (I can, I do not do anything that would require me to use 32GB of RAM) then buy last year model. I have it, amazing machine.

And maybe it would be better to hold on to your MBP, and buy Chromebook, at least to test the water with Linux (or whatever OS you want to use). Install them on small machine, setup few essential programs to you and use them for few weeks. Why am I telling you this? Well I really appreciate some things on macOS, which will keep me glued to it for few more years at least. (iTerm is one of those things)

acchow
I use iTerm daily but I don't think I get it. What makes iTerm so great?
Philipp__
After I used many of dated terminals, everything from xterm to urxvt (was ok), to more modern ones like termite (this one I liked very minimal), I really appreciated everything about iTerm. The amount of GUI customization is insane, plus you can configure everything about from key bindings to mouse, arrangement, etc etc. I really liked it how it doesn't get in your way. Splits are amazing, it is the only terminal where clipboard has worked perfectly with tmux,zsh,vim/emacs combo out of the box. I was really impressed how little configuration it required.
threeseed
It's just a really solid app that is constantly updated.

Very fast, beautifully rendered text, tabs/profiles/split screen are well implemented etc.

mcjiggerlog
What exactly is it that makes you think iTerm is so good? I've started using a MBP after years on ubuntu and I don't think which terminal I am using makes much difference. All I am going to do is open tmux anyway.
Philipp__
I commented above. Ascetics wise macOS has better font rendering. (A lot of nice community made themes for iTerm too). But clipboard works flawlessly out of the box with tmux/zsh/vim/emacs, TrueColor support is awesome too, splits and tabs are amazing and work nice (I know that tmux has something similar to offer, but I really like tabs in iTerm, and I use it in combination with tmux). Amount of customization is staggering really, and app overall always performs well, no latency or lag whatsoever, and is really stable too. While on Ubuntu things were crashing, a lot!
trm42
KTerm of KDE is quite similar to iTerm2. Using them both bot not that much iTerm's special features.
akerro
What's wrong with your current laptop?
Faaak
My first thought. Do you really need to change because you broke your macbook, or do you want to change because its "trendy" ?
Maran
Few problems:

CPU is slowing down lately, even switching tabs in Chrome sometimes takes a 1sec to actually render the page.

Disk is getting too small. I use a lot of VMs for work and I never have enough space to run them all.

Laptop is dead, if I replace it I will be without a laptop for weeks according to Apple.

I let it drop once making the fan very noisy, not really a problem just annoying.

mikhailt
So, you've dropped the laptop and the fan became noisy, which would also lead to CPU throttling because if the fan isn't working right, CPU is going to overheat and your laptop is going to suffer as the result of this.

Did you even take the back off to try to reseat it or clean up the laptop? You can try to take it to an authorized Apple repair shop to see if they can re-seat the fan/clean up the fans for you.

I have same '12 rMBP and the performance is just as snappy as it was back in '12 and I've never reinstall OS either, so it's all consistent and snappy.

I have no plans to upgrade this because there's nothing else that comes close to replacing it right now, not even '16 rMBP.

As for the disk, I put my VMs on external SSDs, works great. Certainly cheaper than replacing the laptop and easier to upgrade every year to more storage.

alex_hitchins
Dell XPS 15 (With touch screen retina style display).
petewailes
I'm running a HP Spectre 13. Couldn't be happier
aorth
They look great actually. Are you running Linux or Windows?

I've been a Mac user for the last few years, but spent the few before that as a ThinkPad + GNU/Linux guy. I could see myself going back to GNU/Linux on the desktop one day.

petewailes
I'm on Windows 10, with a VM linux (when it launched, driver support was buggy to say the least, and I've not been bothered enough to try adding linux again)
pedrocr
Just got a Thinkpad T460s. Practically the same dimensions and specs of a X1 Carbon but with replaceable memory and disk. Can easily be made to have 20GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD, and if someone makes a 32GB DIMM could potentially go up to 36GB of RAM although that's not advertised as supported. Everything works in Linux just fine and the 2560x1440 screen looks great.
creshal
T460s only has partially replaceable memory, some of it is soldered on. And god help you if that fails outside warranty, spare Thinkpad mainboards usually cost more than a new laptop.
pritambaral
The '-s' models are all designed to be slimmer counterparts to the non-'-s' models. Apart from that, the T460 should be identical to the T460s; and I'd recommend the former instead of the latter for the same reason you mention.
creshal
Should, but isn't: The T460 has for inexplicable reasons no high-resolution (WQHD) display option, unlike the T460s and T460p.

Lenovo's model policy (23 different Thinkpad models this year with dozens of options each) is really insufferable.

pedrocr
RAM is pretty reliable so I'm not really worried. One thing I just realized though is that 20GB is probably the absolute max for this machine. Since there are 4GB on the board and the chipset can only do 32GB it's pretty likely that 4+16GB will end up being the maximum.

I've opened the machine and it's a shame they don't just give us 2 DIMM slots and 2 (or 4) M.2 slots so you can just splurge on some more RAM+SSD goodness.

creshal
If the T460 had the same display options available, it would be the perfect alternative: Two DIMM slots, two mass storage slots, two batteries, and still quite compact.
pedrocr
Seems slightly bulkier and 20% heavier, but that's not too bad. I wonder if the T460s panel works fine in the T460 if you're willing to do the swap.
creshal
It will, but you'll void your warranty, and it's annoying that Lenovo doesn't offer it themselves – all their notebooks are built to order anyway, so they're actively hurting themselves by artificially constraining their customers.
mlwarren
What about the T460p? Looks like it has the WQHD option but I can't seem to find info regarding the RAM (soldered or not).
creshal
The T460p has fully expandable RAM (almost 5 pounds), but it's a lot bulkier than the other variants (but somehow has smaller batteries), and for inexplicable reasons uses inferior materials. (Pure ABS plastic like on L/E series Thinkpads, not fibre-reinforced.)

Lenovo's model policy is somewhere between "annoying" and "fucking insane", every laptop is seemingly made by a different team and none ever talks to each other.

soulnothing
I'm curious about the mother board comment. I have a t430, and rebuilt it the motherboard cost me 30$ via ebay. Searching for the t430s I'm seeing about 40 -> 80 on ebay. I'd think that by the time you need to replace the mainboard, it'd be at more attainable levels on the second hand market.
creshal
Third party mainboards are either used (and you don't know whether and for how long they'll work) or not initialized (throwing errors during boot). Factory replacements via Lenovo's spare parts service cost you $400+ for simple models and $800+ for dedicated graphics models.
brian_cloutier
I'm happily on a T460s as well. The nice thing about the T4x0 series is that they're used by lots of Redhat employees so driver issues tend to be resolved quickly.
rimantas
So what made MB "Pro"? SD card slot? Height? Weight? Absence of TouchBar? People complain about 16GB RAM. Does your current MPB has more?
nicky0
This is supposed to be a discussion of MBP alternatives. There are plenty of other threads to discuss the merits of the new Macs.
uniclaude
What made the MB "Pro", if memory serves right, it was filled with components that represented the state of the art when it was released. Best screen, latest generation of CPU, PCIe SSDs, etc... The best you could possibly get, in a sturdy, well designed machine, coming with an OS that just works.

In 2013, some company even found that the best performing Windows laptop was a MBP (!). [1]

[1]: http://www.zdnet.com/article/want-the-most-reliable-windows-...

pjmlp
The GPUs were never state of the art on Mac laptops, and they don't matter for those that just use iTerm + Emacs/Vi.
vetinari
> People complain about 16GB RAM. Does your current MPB has more?

That's the point - the new generation should allow for more than previous. Why would be your motivation for purchase, to get exactly the same thing you have now?

eknkc
I asked the same question and read replies to others. Just a quick summary;

- Lenovo has decent laptops. Personally, I'd not touch anything from Lenovo after their shady stuff. (Maybe not an issue on Linux, maybe it is. I don't trust them)

- Dell XPS series are really good but people complain about coil whine, worse battery life compared to MBP and hit/miss trackpad. It might not be that big of a problem. And if you are running in clamshell mode, these are generally no issues. I don't run clamshell though.

- The Razer Blade stuff seems to be great too. They are mostly aimed for gamers but look decent. Someone mentioned about huge display bezels being really huge in person. Gotta see. I can't find any info about them here, maybe they only sell in USA.

- I skipped Asus due to past support experiences with them. Also some smaller vendors due to possible support issues I'd have especially since I'm out of US.

AsyncAwait
If you don't mind Linux, https://system76.com/laptops has some great machines - the Oryx Pro is a pretty slim, aluminium laptop with much more performance per buck than the MBP.
tmikaeld
500 internal error, seems the server couldn't handle hackernews
AsyncAwait
> seems the server couldn't handle hackernews

Who can? :-) It seems to be back now BTW.

pritambaral
Important corrections:

- Lenovo's ThinkPad line has decent laptops. Lenovo's more popular line, Ideapad, which are branded just "Lenovo", are terrible.

- Dell XPS series are good, but if you're looking to run Linux on them, make sure to get the Developer Editions

y7
Can you elaborate? Why are the Ideapads terrible? Why get a Developer Edition?
ahakki
iirc the developer edition uses some components from other manufacturers than the standard edition. This is because of driver issues on linux.
kyriakos
not terrible, just thinkpads are built for professionals and can generally take more punishment before they break. I'd assume they also use better compoenents.
Arnt
The thinkpads have a long, long history of working well with linux and bsd, too long for it to be a coincidence. The ideapads... don't.

"Developer Edition" is Dell's corporatespeak for "we made sure this works with linux".

dom0
With IdeaPads it's just totally model dependent. Some models work great with Linux, some don't work at all.
Arnt
I really wish I could find anything at all that works well with linux, has at least 4G RAM (better 8 or 16), doesn't have a heavy screen , and is no wider than 28cm. Buying laptops has become really, really difficult. </digression>
dom0
28 cm width essentially excludes the 11.6" to 13.x" category, which are typically at least ~29 cm wide.

So you're probably looking at a 10.6" netbook.

Arnt
Well, I'd probably take an 8G 29cm thing over 4G 28cm, but that doesn't seem to matter much, since I can't find any of either. The small ones all seem to either be tablets with a lightweight attachable keyboard (ie. prone to tip backwards) or they have a locked BIOS and can only run chromeos.
joefreeman
I think the main difference with the developer edition is that it comes with an Intel wireless card. Also maybe some different BIOS settings. And obviously Ubuntu preinstalled.
dom0
The IdeaPads I had were not of low quality. They are plastic through and through, but high quality plastic. They feel reasonably solid and a reasonably priced.

Obviously they are not carved from a solid block of magnesium alloy, like ThinkPads used to be.

pritambaral
They do feel solid. But the innards are not as good (e.g.: poor Broadcom Wi-Fi cards, bad power management).

And the ThinkPad units didn't have Superfish or the Win10-only-SSD BIOS lock.

wyclif
My wife has one, and the trackpads on them are terrible compared to a MBP. I don't know how they compare to other laptops in the current Lenovo line.
pritambaral
> Why are the Ideapads terrible?

I was speaking from past experience and my frustration at the poor build quality, poor management, and all the creepy stuff Lenovo has done to laptops in the Ideapad line (Superfish, Win10-only SSD (which they recently backed down from) etc.)

Beyond me, others would tell you that IdeaPad is Lenovo's consumer laptop line, and as such it sees less quality put into it.

> Why get a Developer Edition?

Because those units are built for Linux compatibility, while non–Developer Edition units are hit-and-miss.

creshal
Because Ideapads are developed by Chinese teams, with much lower target price points, and are under the management who thought Superfish was a good idea. Thinkpads don't have these problems.
yellowapple
"Why are the Ideapads terrible?"

They're consumer models, and the ones most likely to be affected by Lenovo's malware shenanigans. Most "PC" OEMs tend to build their business lines better than their consumer lines, and Lenovo's no exception. The Thinkpad line also has a reputation of being friendlier to non-Windows operating systems in general (they're the most-recommended for OpenBSD, for example), while the Ideapad line very much does not.

"Why get a Developer Edition?"

Because they're designed with Linux compatibility in mind, from what I understand.

vise890
Instead of XPSs, we bought Precisions 15 5000 at work [1]. They are basically XPS 15, (virtually indistinguishable apart for the engraving on the bottom), but you can spec them to bits (you can even get a Xeon processor if you want,have them with no OS / Ubuntu). All of us are reasonably happy with them.

[1]: http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/precision-m5510-workstatio...

robert_nsu
Another Precision user chiming in. I got one at work and after I updated the Intel video driver, I've had no complaints.
72deluxe
These look very good, thanks for the recommendation.
memsom
Lenovo Thinkpad T540p - the worst track pad I have ever used - truly abysmal. Avoid, avoid, avoid!!
mmusc
razor sells in the uk and other markets too www.razerzone.com but they cost an arm and a leg
kyriakos
some of the Asus machines are pretty good - I had good experiences with a non-ultrabook laptop for the past 5 years.

most of the issues I read about with Asus is regarding the build quality of their ultrabooks (the hinge in particular) and screen issues (yellow cast on some models). Other than that, all Asus stuff I used are good quality and at least my local support is good.

Jayakumark
Was waiting more than an 4 years for replacing MacBook Pro 2012 which is the last MBP you can upgrade on your own. and finally after seeing the event - went with dell outlet new latitude E5470 with Core i7 6820HQ the same processor used in 15" MBP version selling at $2399 . It has 8gb Ram and SSD for $635. Will add additional 8gb for $40, will receive it tomorrow . I probably would never buy MBP again since there is no bang for buck . would be happy to pay twice the premium for apple but 4 times forget it. They are selling ultra books as pro's for premium . It's more like cheating and milking customers than providing value.
bosie
do you mind providing a link? I can only find the E5470 with 8GB but not 16GB
Jayakumark
Looks like 16gb is out of stock i dont see it too, you can buy another 8gb one and upgrade to 16gb for $40 from newegg.
iworkforthem
Lenovo... works really well. Ubuntu + Lenovo can last many years.
beatpanda
The Dell developer edition laptops are really excellent machines. I've used the M3800 and the XPS13 and found them both to be great.
pknerd
I have March 2015 MB 2.9GHz with 8GB Ram. Working cool and I don't guess I'd need up-gradation
x0x0
copying my comment from here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12832547

You can buy a dell xps 15 today that comes with: 3840 x 2160 display / 1tb pcie solid state disk / nvidia gtx 960m (crucial for developing cuda programs and prototyping deep learning on your laptop) / 32g ram. For $2340 (ten percent off coupon at the top of the page). I'm not sure if this link will work: http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/productdetails/xps-15-9550-la...

And this thing comes with regular usb ports and an hdmi port instead of usb-c nonsense so I don't have to immediately drop $250 in dongles just to keep the capabilities I already have. (And one usb-c port).

here's a detailed guide to getting with ubuntu from a year ago: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2301071

it appears that it only works modestly well. So if you buy this, you're probably going to have to live with Windows or the issues in the above thread.

========

My personal plan is to buy a 1-ish year old mac and cross my fingers that someone builds a well-supported powerful linux laptop by 2018. Good sleep/power management support seems to be a common problem.

threeseed
Massive tip if you decide to stay with a < 2015 MacBook Pro.

Open up the laptop and reapply the thermal paste on the CPU with something high quality like Arctic Silver. It really needs redoing after 1-2 years. This will result in a significant improvement to overall performance. Why ? Because when OSX detects that the laptop is overheating it schedules a dummy task e.g. secd or kernel_task to throttle the CPU. Cool the laptop and the throttling stops. Use iStat Menus or top to check for the process.

Takes all of 10 minutes and iFixit can guide you through it. As much of a performance difference as going from HDD->SSD. The other most vital thing to do on OSX since all of the daemons result in lots of random reads (check fs_usage).

72deluxe
Is this specific to certain years only? I have a 2012 non-retina and it is great, but apparently certain years had more problems than others. Would you recommend it for my 2012 model too?
dom0
This is a general issue affecting lots of notebooks from all vendors.
threeseed
Sure. But what I haven't seen on Windows or Linux is the deliberate high priority scheduling of a dummy process designed to throttle the CPU.
dom0
The CPU will throttle itself soon enough after that anyway. The only difference would be that without the kernel throttling it earlier, it can get a bit hotter and last a bit longer before throttling.
threeseed
Not sure. But I suspect it is in the more recent years where the thinner unibody has been required to take on more of the cooling duties. So if you are like me and use your laptop on the bed, on your lap etc then you are by design preventing the laptop from cooling properly.

Everything I've seen says thermal paste is only effective at most a couple of years. It is harder to replace on your 2012 model but not difficult:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Mid...

klagermkii
As a more reliable way to confirm if you have some thermal problem on an older Mac, download and run Intel Power Gadget. That shows the current frequency of the CPU, and when combined with running some program that puts all cores under load, you can see if the frequency drops below what is designed for.

Be aware it isn't always thermal paste that is the culprit. I had a 2012 Retina 15" MBP that was normally 2.6GHz but would drop down to 1.4GHz. That was purely due to the fans and (tiny) vents getting choked up. Solved by opening and using compressed air to clean, no fiddling with CPU paste.

azurelogic
This. This. This.

I have "refurbished" 2 MacBook Pros now, and this is part of my process. Max out the RAM, install SSD, replace battery, reapply thermal paste, clean with canned air. When I did this to a 2009 13" MBP that got me through grad school (already had max RAM and an SSD), I found that it ran cooler than I remember it running when I first bought it. Recently, I bought a used 2011 15" MBP (no HDD, swelled up battery, popped out trackpad, missing case screws) for $100. I used an SSD from my desktop that recently became a media server, then spent $110 on 16 GB of RAM, a new battery, and screws. That machine is killing it.

This is one of the things that saddens me about everything after the retina MBP transition: we can no longer do all of these kinds of major performance enhancements on our own, and some of these repairs have become much more difficult.

Edit: I use Noctua NT-H1 because it has excellent thermal characteristics and it isn't electrically conductive so it won't kill your hardware if you get it somewhere you shouldn't.

http://noctua.at/en/nt-h1.html

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/noctua_nt_h1/5.htm

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Noctua/NT-H1/4.html