Ask HN: Who is switching away from MacBooks this year?
I noticed that a lot of my colleagues were thinking of switching away from the Mac and onto Surface Books or Surface Pros. I've had a Surface Pro for the last six months after having MacBooks for two years prior, and some bugs aside, I am really happy with it.
Who else is thinking of doing this?
95 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 181 ms ] threadMac unit sales have rebounded after a few quarters of decline, and Mac revenue is actually up by around $500 million, hopefully proving to Apple that people actually will buy Macs when the company releases new ones. Both the revenue growth and the unit sales growth can be attributed to the new MacBook Pro
Why add layers of complexity when you can just run the OS you want?
I find that the battery lasts longer than my last MacBook Pro as well.
I've seen the Surface Pro, and I find it intriguing, but can't really picture wanting to purchase or use one.
Got the non-touchbar model and it's by far the best machine I've ever used.
I use Mac and Windows every day at work. Rarely, if ever, do I have any issues with my Windows hardware but my Mac hardware constantly causes me problems. Just last week I had to take steps to "zap the PRAM" on my 2012 Mac Pro since every USB port died for no reason.
I also have multiple wireless USB mice that work fine on my Macs until I go to the Updates tab of the App Store...at which point they simply stop working. Another problem I have with my Macs is that there is no built-in way to disable an external monitor without unplugging it or powering it down.
Honestly, I've been using Macs since the 90's, I've always had hardware problems with them and when I look around I see others having the same problems - so I know it's not just me. If you search the web you can see millions of others having Mac hardware issues - so I'm not really sure where Apple fans are getting the idea that Mac hardware "just works" because it quite obviously does not.
It's a matter of what issues you feel comfortable dealing with. There is no computer utopia, unless you're only surfing and writing documents, and need nothing more complex than a Chromebook. ;)
The one I mentioned about certain USB mice dying has never been fixed. Another thing that will never ever be fixed is the lack of choice video cards that I can put into the PCIe slot on my Mac Pro. Other problems with PRAM or SMC/sleep have a "fix" but somehow they keep popping up and you have to keep applying the fix. I can tell you honestly that I never have recurring problems on the Windows because things get fixed quite rapidly since Microsoft obviously still cares about Windows.
Anyway, I don't care about Chromebooks or other walled garden devices really. Even if I just wanted something to browse with I would prefer a Windows tablet so I could have some freedom ;)
Unfortunately, I ragequit it and sold it after dealing with the "sleep of death" issue enough times. Well-documented issue, and supposedly fixed with updates. (that was not my experience).
Meanwhile, all of the Mac problems I mentioned are still not fixed and Apple is still quite obviously, ignoring their desktop OS. They've also always hated power users where-as Microsoft caters to them on hand and foot.
Definitely no arguments on the Mac stuff though... (as I type from my shiny new Dell XPS)
I never claimed Macs didn't have hardware issues. I claimed that it is nearly impossible to convince a die-hard Windows user that perhaps they might be happier overall on a Mac.
> I claimed that it is nearly impossible to convince a die-hard Windows user that perhaps they might be happier overall on a Mac.
No you didn't. You just said "Windows users" and you didn't say anything about being "happier overall", you said that it was hard to convince them that they "just work".
Now you're trying to say that you "never claimed Macs didn't have hardware issues". What do you suppose "just works" means in English?
I guess when you go around spouting off ridiculously broad and obviously incorrect statements such "it just works", you're going to be "misunderstood".
Please don't create accounts to break the HN guidelines with.
Why don't you ban the other guy for being an asshole to me by calling my response "useless"? That was extremely fucking rude and it made me angry.
> Please don't create accounts to break the HN guidelines with.
Oh, don't worry about that - I didn't. But I will be back with another account and I'll be sure to be so fucking polite in my responses to assholes like this that you're going to die from the sheer delight of my flowery words.
My SO has a XPS 13 and while the build is much better than any Windows laptop I've seen, I don't think it's worth switching.
Really my decision is between the smaller 12 inch vs the 13 inch.
OS X has been my primary productivity OS for more than ten years now, but I'm in the process of switching. I'll keep using my 2012 MBP until it physically falls apart, but make no mistake: this will be my last MacBook. Not sure what I'll replace it with when the time comes, performant laptops with a long battery life and 2TB+ storage are amazingly hard to come by these days.
My iPhone has a broken screen that can't be fixed without permanently losing the finger print scanner, so that's going to be my last iPhone as well.
On the desktop side, I'm using an iMac/PC dual setup (with Synergy), so I'm still dragging my heels a bit because honestly it hurts to let OS X go. Windows and I will never be friends, but there is no question that the PC platform is going to be the future for me.
To be clear, switching sucks royally for me, but staying would suck more. macOS hasn't deteriorated to the point where I want to leave it behind yet, although the writing is on the wall. But Apple's hardware philosophy and practice makes it so I'd really hate giving them even more money for yet another even more hilariously overpriced, closed-down, underperforming, outdated, unrepairable, not-upgradeable appliance that they think is going to be the future of computing.
For all that people complain about pulseaudio, it's been working pretty well for me for the last 5 years or so.
I'll admit I'm a bit of an outlier, though: I run xubuntu as my base system but i3 as my main window manager. I'm sooo much more productive on it than anything else I've ever used - it's amazing how much time I used to spend adjusting window sizes.
I don't know why you're thinking you're going to any better off with some other smartphone. I broke my Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge's screen and nobody could fix it. Nobody would replace it. I checked icracked, tmobile stores, called around. Now I have a LGV20 in an otter case, and the class that covers the camera has cracks. These phones are fragile.
At least with iPhones you have a large enough market where small businesses can help. With some random android phone from LG with nationwide sales in the low millions annually I'm pretty much not going to find anyone to help me fix anything. And there aren't like any LG stores, like there are Apple stores you can go to.
My problem, and the reason why I want to stop supporting Apple specifically is that my ridiculous $1000 phone has a home button that is cryptographically coupled to the device, and physically bonded to the display, in an effort to make repairs impossible.
Why?
That's not true in my experience. Unless the actual button/scanner is broken (unlikely) you can transplant it to a new screen without too much trouble.
Source: I've changed a couple of screens for friends and family.
Edit:
Here's a repair guide that includes the home button transplant.
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+7+Display+Assembly+Repla...
Did you buy Applecare Plus? I broke my screen on my 6S and Apple replaced the entire phone. They also offered to replace only the screen, but I opted to pay more for a full replacement because the body was damaged. They never mentioned anything about the fingerprint reader being impaired after replacing the screen.
I just reclaimed my 2009 MBP after upgrading my wife's MBP. I'd never notice it wasn't current If it wasn't for running a little hot and the non-retina screen.
I have negative interest in the touch bar or that awful keyboard.
After Windows 10 got Ubuntu, there was no looking back.
I am still thinking about replacing my iPad Air for an iPad Pro, though. I love a small tablet I can write on, too.
I'm now back on a 2016 15" TB MBP and happy to be "home" on macOS.
There's really nothing wrong with this machine. It might not be the giant leap forward from the 2015 model that people hoped for, but it's a perfectly fine machine to get work done with.
I had a macbook air 13 from my company and would probably have kept it to this date. Since my company took it back I am using some 13' toshiba with i3 and 4gb of ram running ubuntu.. haven't seen the need to upgrade.
> I am using some 13' toshiba with i3 and 4gb of ram...
You're complaining about the hardware not being better and you're using a super low-end laptop. Maybe your real complaint is price, not performance, as you can get machines like that for $200 if you're not concerned about anything other than cost.
In MY day to day, as a backend / front-end / devops guy, it isn't worth the money to buy anything better than what I have IMO.
All I do is vim, run stuff in cloud machines through ansible (SSH), and a browser.
My last MacBook Air with an i7 was better than what I have but not $2k better.