Ask HN: Will you really move away from Apple hardware?
Just as a thought experiment for current Apple users - if you joined a new company and were offered a new MacBook Pro (the most recently showcased) or a new [NON-APPLE] laptop, would you choose the [NON-APPLE] laptop? I ask because I've heard many say they're looking for hardware to run elementary OS on, which is mimicking the mac OS UI (I don't mean to disparage elementary OS - I think their work is fantastic!). If you're not paying the bill, will you really move away from Apple?
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 172 ms ] threadBut since then I've found myself on Arch Linux on a ThinkPad X220. I love Arch! Default packages configurations are great. Although it requires some significant knowledge of the system to install & maintain, it's very stable and documentation is great. I find it to be much more stable than Ubuntu, in the sense that if something goes unexpectedly, there's going to be detailed documentation about what exactly is going on. With Ubuntu, the changes in the underpinnings of the system are enshrouded in a certain amount of mystery outside of the developer circle.
Upgrading by a major version means that your whole system might switch, for example, from upstart to systemd. This is something you will likely find out through trial and error when something does wrong. Whereas in Arch, everything is transparent.
I'm using Gnome 3, which has matured quite a bit and is very nice with the touch screen.
Might move to a Razer Blade on windows as hackintosh on the 1060 isn't an option right now. -- I have high hopes for Windows' Linux Subsystem.
I'll be hackintoshing a laptop this time around.
I don't use computers a lot apart from when I am working, and for the leisurely things I do it does not matter which OS I am using, as everything runs in a browser nowadays. https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/mac_pc.png
Newer computer is a Lenovo Flex 3 with Win 10 I got for under $500. I've been on a MB/MBP for almost 10 years now at various jobs. If I really need a MBP I use that. I don't see myself buying any more apple products though (including phones/ipads).
Still happy with my iMac and Macbook Pro. Having 14+ years of OS experience and familiarity, the technical updates or lack thereof aren't enough of a driver to abandon the former.
The corollary to this being, it could get much worse. The best parallel I can draw, if you'll permit a terrible political analogy, might be idealistic Bernie supporters slowly realizing they're going to end up with a choice between Clinton and Trump.
As for the new mac stuff I've never been a mac fan, not a win fan either.. I'd much rather have my arch linux builds any day, but I'm not a hardcore gamer or graphic designer either. I'm just a laravel / elixir developer. But I do feel like Apple's lost their way there's just too much negative 'mojo' in the air, they need to pivot and embrace the hard core techies who used to love them, or they'll become irrelevant and it'll be like the 90's again.
Google and microsoft have both had pretty exciting launches this year, there's lots of amazing tech going on in the world today, but when the majority of the stories are negative that can have an effect maybe not today or this quarter, but down the line in 2018 for example.
I've had the same problem with every Linux distro I've tried, but I dumped them due to UX jank, not compatibility problems.
When I go to build a new desktop workstation every 5 years or so, I want to pick the components based off bang for the buck, not just compatibility with hackintosh installations. And if I really need MacOS to run something work-related, I'm not gonna count on a hobbyist project like that to do it. I'm gonna get work to pay for Apple hardware or take it out of whatever freelance budget I have.
I guess if I had both the budget to build a second workstation for MacOS stuff and a strong desire to run non-employment-related MacOS-only software, I might just build a 100% compatible hackintosh but as it stands, there's nothing I really absolutely need that only runs on MacOS so instead I just use my Windows desktop workstation for just about everything, my Asus notebook for mobile DJ/VJ gigs, and the ancient MBP I got for free a while back for the rare occasion that I want to screw around with something that only runs on MacOS.
Sadly though. They've fallen too far behind. It's like Microft and Apple flipped. Win10 is fast, amazingly stable, and I can run all my monitors and tools on super fast machines. Even just picked up a Razor laptop running Mint and. Chromebook running Elemental.
Thought about trying the hackintosh but too much trouble.
I think if you forget to provide great hardware and tools for power developers at the front end of our cycle, you fall behind and fail to innovate / have a good support community in short order.
As much as I like Tim Cook and his values, he really reminds me of the same fit as Ballmer. Not as much of a Dick though :)
Apple really needs another visionary like Jobs, or Satya.
Makes me sad.
It seems like a polished OS, some shortcuts need tuning but might work.
Here's my primary reasons for using OSX / Mac's all these years:
-- A unix variant shell underneath - so I can do all my work fast, relatively compatible with my linux servers in the cloud, and run things like MySQL, Mongo, Node, etc... locally. Definitely a keyboard guy as well. Now that Windows has Bash/Canonical -- I suspect this will be a game changer.
-- Terminal and Iterm -- Actually - this is probably the major reason. I run lots of windows, and lots of scripting therein. Conemu / Putty for Windows isn't bad. Linux has a few not so bad terminal clients, but nothing touches Iterm. Come to think of it - if I had iTerm on my Win10 machine, with bash for scripting, and a great ssh command line client - I'd have no issues making it my daily driver.
-- Sublime Text. -- But I've been back using Vim and Emacs more and more.
-- Something about Windows... they seem to have no concern for interrupting what you're doing and popping up a window that just blocks everything. It's like a 'rude' operating system. Mac's just don't seem to do that.
-- Actually the Apps that have kept me on a Mac: iTerm, Panic Transmit, Sublime Text, and Bash/Zsh.
What I really want in a Mac:
GTX 1080's or NVidia Titan X's, or something that can actually do GPU work relatively fast (Machine learning is eating the world), and drive multiple 4k monitors. 32+G of RAM.
Happy to give up some battery life and weight to do these.
I think that'll get you one slot, so make it count. I'd also like to see if anaconda can work with an external adaptor for compute.
(Would be really nice if those update nags would fuck off, though)
Everything I do is on remote connections of one sort or another, and OSX has a simple way to swap out one virtual desktop with another. Everything that requires real computing power I do on a cloud, and everything else I think would work fine on any reasonable machine.
I'm sure a windows/linux system could do the same as my MBP, and in terms of work it wouldn't really matter as we use windows and linux together. I think more or less any laptop in the price range would be able to drive multiple screens, and it's really just a question of minor things like whether keyboard/trackpad feels nice.
So it is a bit of a hair thin decision. If this whole no-ESC no-Fkey thing seems to go badly for other devs, I won't get another Mac. I need F keys to step through a debug, and it's annoying to change key bindings.
Can't recommend that highly enough! Way better than cygwin, plus offers a level of isolation you can't get on the mac unless you use something like vagrant also.
To do anything at all with iOS I need a Mac. So I expect that I will always have one around as long as iOS is a thing for me.
Windows is my favorite desktop and it is the best performer in my opinion. I absolutely need it to do work for most clients. Windows is the one that I will probably never be able switch away from completely.
As shipped, it had flaky wifi and the audio clipped both through the speakers and headphones.
Thinking of trying another brand after I get my refund.
Everything more-or-less "just worked" after installing.
I'm unsure whether DELL has fixed the XPS 13 issues in the latest iterations, but reading long term reviews in hardware forums is rather discouraging.
Also just had my company buy me a new macbook pro because I need it, but didn't buy my own (which I'd usually prefer) because I'm keeping my options open.
However, I really keep hoping someone comes out with a competing operating system and ecosystem similar to Mac OS, but I haven't found anything that compares. Elementary is the closest I've seen from the open source world, but it needs a LOT more features and polish. I like Mac OS, but the quality issues and general product direction in the past few years have me itching to be able to replace it if I need to.
For work: i work in an OS-agnostic kind of world.