Wow, I'm impressed that a BIOS update can fix a coil whine. Got any background info on how they did it? Or did they just disable some core hardware feature for it?
Surprisingly, I found coil whine much harder for the ears than fans. I installed an APC UPS under my desk, and there is a slight coil whine that it driving me nuts, while my GPU fans going crazy when I play never bothered me.
This is one thing I've seen mentioned a lot, but never really noticed. Though my office (where I mostly use the laptop) is near an HVAC system, which usually provides a few dB of background noise to drown out subtler sounds.
I like this writeup but I sort of expected it to contain a "Windows 10 Review from a lifelong macos user" embedded in it. I was surprised that this was just about the hardware.
As a happy lifelong Windows user, surrounded by programmers who call me insane (or an idiot, even) for liking it, I was curious to learn more about what a developer who's used to Mac thinks about the Windows 10 dev experience. (notably for a more honest impression of what I might be missing)
I always had very little sympathy for those who express very strong opinion _against_ other OSes and their users, professionals or not. In 2018 every one of the main OSes can be used efficiently for programming purposes, windows10 too especially now that it has the WLS
I've been hearing this about WSL for a while now. However, I just spent a ton of time (like weeks) actually trying Windows 10 and the Windows Subsystem for Linux (for those who don't know what WSL is), coming from a Mac, and I gotta say, WSL isn't there yet for the code I work with. Specifically, it worked fine for some Python stuff, it built some Go code decently, I figured something out for Docker, but then it blew up on the Rails apps I use (a missing syscall implementation breaks unicorn).
Aside from the potential to run into show-stopping problems like that, you may run into "big company" problems if you work for one, like I do. That is, VPN support within WSL only half-works, and because it's Windows you may be forced to follow domain policies that require Windows Defender to run, which slows down WSL, and blocks you from Insider builds that could fix WSL problems.
You can run a Linux VM on Windows instead of WSL. Which has its own set of problems and is overall a worse experience than developing on macOS, in my opinion.
So currently while, as a Mac user, I actually prefer the Windows 10 UI, the hardware competition, the keyboards, etc., I can't use WSL. Side-projects that you can adapt to WSL's limitations are one thing, but making it work as your development environment for a wide-range of professional projects is another. I saw all this with some actual sadness because I'm tired of investing in Apple when they've basically abandoned macOS and are making so many hardware choices I disagree with, that affect me (keyboard, touch bar).
Would I be correct that you tried WSL in late summer/fall last year? I'm asking because WSL got a pile of new syscalls, a couple of which (if I recall correctly) fixed the unicorn issue you hit. Likewise, there are now standard GPOs you can distribute that exempt WSL from Defender. I 100% agree that running a Linux VM can sometimes be a lot better (and it's not exactly hard, given that Hyper-V has been in Windows for forever and has strong command-line support), but I find that I can use WSL for virtually everything these days compared to even six months ago.
Actually, it was as recently as this very week! Running with all the latest updates on a new Surface Book 2, I ran into a variation of this open issue: https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/1982.
That was only the last and final blocking issue I ran into, after a series of minor (or at least, not serious) problems that I powered through during too many late nights.
Couple of things:
- Hyper-V. Was excited for this and tried it, since I had already set up Docker for Windows and pointed the CLI tools in WSL at it. However, Hyper-V didn't appear to have any support for the "shared folder" concept that VMWare and VirtualBox do. Is your only option here to set up Windows share and use Samba?
- I dislike running VMs generally, but would have gone that route if I could have gotten a setup I liked. However, after reconfiguring everything to use VirtualBox (including Docker) and creating a single VM there to do Docker and Linux stuff on, it seemed to tax the machine too much (i5 8GB SB2). With a beefy machine that would have worked better, but Windows 10 isn't that appealing if I have to buy the highest-spec machines and run VMs... that's exactly where it was 5-10 years ago.
I have a lot more to say about WSL and Windows 10, and it probably deserves a blog post. I haven't returned the Surface yet because I'm kinda in love with it, but also if I can't do all my work on it, then it's not something I need to own.
Actually, it was as recently as this very week! Running with all the
latest updates on a new Surface Book 2, I ran into a variation of
this open issue: https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/1982.
Well that stinks. I'd swear I hit this and it got resolved with the inotify-related patches, but clearly I misremembered. Might be thinking of uwsgi or something.
Re. Hyper-V: yeah, I do a Samba mount. This in my experience actually performs a ton better than VirtualBox shared folders, but it's been a long time. I have no idea how it compares to VMware's implementation. (VMware and VirtualBox also have the ability to cleanly virtualize a graphics-accelerated Linux desktop, which is not something I need or care about, but might be a show-stopper for both WSL and Hyper-V if you do.)
That's okay -- I'm sure they fixed something like that issue! The WSL team has been crazy busy, and their work so far is super impressive.
VirtualBox shared folders had their own problems. `npm` wants to create symlinks for commands provided by packages, but VirtualBox doesn't support symlinks by default on Windows shares. So you have to execute an arcane command to enable that feature -- every time you restart the computer.
Interesting to hear that performance is decent with the Samba share. I presumed it would be otherwise. In that case, Hyper-V with Samba may be my last shot at getting the machine to work for me... we'll see if I can muster any more enthusiasm.
NTFS actually has support for proper symbolic links, which are not the same as junction points. I come across this confusion fairly often and I'm not clear why. (`mklink /d` is what you're looking for, and do note that this is different from `mklink /j` in meaningful ways. Do note these commands must be run from an Administrator shell prior to Windows 10.)
[EDIT: Also, reading GP, it looks like their issue is something about VirtualBox support for symlinks, not Windows support for symlinks. Symlinks are enabled in Windows by default, so they'd only have to do something special if they were on a domain that disabled them in the group policy--but in that case, they wouldn't be able to turn them back on themselves on a reboot anyway.]
> you may run into "big company" problems if you work for one
This is the biggest problem I have with Windows. Microsoft lets corporate IT depts fuck it up. Such control should not be possible. It's my computer, I should be able to use it as I like.
At least they shouldn't be able to override existing functionality, like disabling edge and windows store.
I found that all I need is git for Windows and its bash and Unix commands, plus ConEmu for terminals.
I'm completely at ease with developing on Windows now, and I've "done Linux" since 1994, worked long for one of the major Linux vendors and even contributed a bit to the Linux kernel (networking and firewall), but if I had to do system administration I might have a stronger opinion (simply because I'M so sued to Unix ways in general).
For the last couple of years I looked at how nature (biology) "computes", not just neurons, the entire bio-chemistry with its machinery. Now that is something different - while everything people put on their computers works on pretty much the exact same principles unless you zoom all the way in to nanometer scale (figuratively speaking).
Not completely true. Apple sucks, and as a result of that iOS development is clearly more convenient on Mac OS.
I would also clearly prefer windows for projects supposed to run on windows servers, and Linux for projects supposed to run on Linux. Mac OS Server is utter crap and completely useless, so Apple doesn't have that going for it.
I develop on Windows 10, in CUDA/C++, Erlang, and F#. And I never use WSL, even though we deploy on Centos. Windows is best if you use it as Windows! Take the time to learn Powershell, and use the Powershell console, not "cygwin" or bash in WSL.
I agree it would be really nice to hear this users opinion on Win10, but I’m not surprised it wasn’t included.
They mention that they also use an iPad and other setups, which suggests they’re doing rather platform-agnostic dev work. Once you shell into a box in the cloud, only the keyboard and screen are any different.
Exactly; for 90% of my work, I just need a CLI with SSH, a text editor (I use Sublime, so it works the same on Windows as Mac) a filesystem somewhere, git, and a good keyboard.
I stick to my Mac exclusively for photo and video work, but I can get most things done on Windows as needed (though a few workflows are a little more annoying than I'd like in the absence of Spotlight, Automator, and a few Mac-only niche apps I love to use).
What I'd like most from a Laptop Win 10 review is a 2 year later review.
We use a macbook air at home, it still runs just as good as when we got it. I've always had issues with Windows where the out of the box experience is incredible, but 2 years later, I'm waiting 5 minutes after start for, 'things to finish' before the computer begins to feel fast again.
Whenever I look at replacing the Air, I get nearly to the end of the checkout with a new macbook pro 13" (what I use for work), when I get a sick feeling that I shouldn't be spending $2k for our house 'in front of the tv' laptop.
I think it depends a lot on the specifics of the hardware and your usage - I choose my Win 10 boxen to be good quality - HP or Dell or Lenovo business gear. I even ran Win 10 for long time on 15" MBP. Never had issues anywhere except with the 1803 update killing sleep on my Z230 which required rollback to fix. I also don't install and delete random stuff on those boxes.
Macs for the most part in the house are trouble free too. But suddenly apps not launching or just beachballing is not uncommon after high number of suspend/resume cycles without reboot. Truth be told it's amazing in OS land right now - Fedora/Ubuntu, W10, macOS all do a number of things right without a sweat.
One thing that Win10 on my X1C6 has macOS beat is speed to the desktop after suspend. I don't know about TouchID MBPs but connected standby + Fingerprint logon on Windows 10 makes the resume to desktop experience blazing fast.
"S Mode" and forcing more of your Windows 10 application installs to use the Microsoft Store is a big one. A lot of the biggest culprits for the start time "things to finish" were ad hoc updaters from various terrible vendors.
Everyone: don't install Flash (built in to IE/Edge, if you need it, and you likely don't), don't install Java as much as you can avoid it (find alternatives or standalone installs), and install iTunes only from the Microsoft Store if you want it (goodbye Apple Updater, you will not be missed).
Those recommendations alone take care of so much startup gunk.
Power Users: check Startup applications and Services in Task Manager's Advanced/Details view from time to time. Task Manager in Windows 10 lets you disable Startup applications directly without needing any other tool. Many third party services you can switch from Automatic to Automatic (Delayed Start) and lose no functionality, but get out of the Windows startup "hot path". I have backup software that absolutely needed to be (Delayed Start), not just because it was slowing Windows startup but also because it was trying to access system/network resources before Windows was ready for them anyway, yet the installer did not default it to be (Delayed Start) up until just recently. (If you build Windows Services, consider defaulting your service installers for Delayed Start or Trigger Start. You don't need to be in the startup hot path, you are more likely to be getting in the way.)
I'm happy to share my thoughts. I developed on Macs for 8 years, then switched to Windows 10 for 2 years (inclusive of Insider builds).
In some ways, the transition was pretty painless. I mainly use JetBrains products, so there was very little pain in the switch there. I expected that, which is one of the reasons why I decided to switch in the first place.
However, what I hadn't predicted was how few of the quality-of-life tweaks I was using had equivalents on Windows. For example, I was using the clipboard history feature extensively on Alfred when I was using Mac, and Ditto is barely a replacement for Windows. Recording screencasts with Screenflow on Mac is painless, and Windows (at the time) didn't have a comparable equivalent. The built-in functionality for window management in Windows is not bad, but it doesn't compare to Spectacle for flexibility.
Those are just a few examples, but collectively, these ended up adding a surprisingly painful amount of friction to my development process, even when the IDE was exactly the same. I finally ended up admitting defeat and switching back to MacOS.
I might conclude that if you're using the out-of-the-box, platform default environment, Visual Studio and Windows 10 are probably going to give a better experience than XCode + vanilla MacOS. Then again, if you're the kind of person whose .vimrc has decades of tweaks, you'll probably be happier in Linux. Basically, my view is to just let everyone do what they want and what they feel comfortable with, coexist with them, and don't try to convert/proselytize in general, which I believe is a pretty non-controversial stance.
> The built-in functionality for window management in Windows is not bad, but it doesn't compare to Spectacle for flexibility.
You can actually download extra utilities for this. I like switcher (lets me search open windows by name), but there are quite a few others. The entire Windows shell is replaceable if you want to go that far.
I've never had a problem recording screen casts, lots of software options have always existed there, and they only keep getting better.
To get the full feature set of ScreenFlow, multiple apps would be needed though, I haven't seen any single app that does it all, although one may exist.
Also what Window Management features does Windows not have? I generally use the hotkeys for everything, without issue. I wish it was easier to do things like splitting my display into 3, but again lots of 3rd party utilities exist to expand the functionality out.
> Then again, if you're the kind of person whose .vimrc has decades of tweaks, you'll probably be happier in Linux.
This is how I feel about Windows, my path environments, custom aliases, and utility scripts laying around. :)
Mac user since 2006 here, who often tries switching back to Windows. The biggest deal breaker for me has been the Windows 10 update system, where it will sometimes start installing updates when you shut down your computer and tell you "don't turn off your computer". There's been times when I've been stuck at a cafe for 45 minutes & nearly missed a train home because Windows was still sitting there saying "Don't Turn Off Your Computer". With the Mac, I can close the lid and it will always go into sleep mode straight away (with its excellent snooze light to indicate sleep mode), or shutdown and have everything off in seconds.
There's also a Mac program called SuperDuper! that makes bootable copies of drives, so I can clone my internal drive to an external USB, and if/when my internal drive fails, I can actually boot directly from the cloned USB drive, just by plugging it in during the Mac startup sequence. It has saved my bacon several times. I don't think there's a Windows equivalent, unless that has changed.
The Mac has a snooze light? Where? I’ve been using a MacBook Air since 2010 and MacBook Pro since 2015 and haven’t seen anything resembling a snooze light. Would love to discover this!
Oh no, did they remove it on later models? I'm still using a 2012 MBP (bought new in 2015), that I upgraded to 16GB and 2TB and is still covered by AppleCare. My 2006 & 2007 MacBooks had the light too.
Aside from it being cool/delightful, it's also useful. When you close the lid, the light initially stays fully on, until the system has actually entered sleep mode. If it stays fully lit (and doesn't start 'breathing'), it's a hint that the machine hasn't actually gone to sleep. Do not put a non-sleeping MacBook in a backpack, or it will get insanely hot to touch...
I think it's worse. I'm not going to say it's pretty bad, but it's not quite up to par with Macintosh.
- You get three clipboards in OS X. Windows gives you 1
- all of the UNIX utilities work (find, grep, xargs, they're all there), all the syscalls work. Because it really is UNIX
- readline shortcuts are available everywhere out of the box. Windows confines me to Cygwin and Emacs
- Cygwin is okay ($PATH versus %PATH% annoys me), but it's not even close to Homebrew
- Visual Studio is a disaster most of the time I use it. YMMV
- a lot of stuff does not run on Windows (most memorably, Swift) whereas almost everything runs on Debian and most things run on OS X
I have a Windows laptop and I've resorted to running Debian on VMware and ssh'ing in with Putty/Xming. I'm surrounded by programmers who openly mock OS X ("you can't develop on a mac!") and tend to stick to Microsoft Approved Software Component Framework -type stuff.
To be fair, I haven't tried WSL. I tried to install Docker, but I was told my top-o'-the-line PC needed another $140 to play that game. Crappy DLC is all it is to me.
I run Visual Studio on my Mac and full proper VS Ultimate on Windows and both are fine. For C++ it works well.. IMO a lot better than XCode IDE, Code::Blocks, Eclipse or any other out-of-box that I’ve tried.
Interested to know why you say that VS is a disaster?
I have a Dell XPS 13 as my personal machine. It runs Linux. Everything works.
But, I still find myself using my MacBook Pro (provided by work) for almost everything even at home.
Two things that keep me in the Mac land.
1. Retina Display and the 16:10 aspect ratio.
2. Smooth, and usable touchpad.
XPS13's display is too rectangle and I'm not watching movies in it. It feels too cramped for looking at code. GNOME out of the box does not do fractional scaling (125%) hence everything looks either too big or too small to my taste.
I dont have the patience or the know-how to tune the touchpad to be decent in Linux.
But you don’t even see it in like an unofficial libinput patch done by someone who is hobby-passionate. I’ve never had a good trackpad experience outside of Apple and I refuse to believe it hasn’t been reversed.. It can’t be patents, can it?
I legit used to no-scope people in Halo Combat Evolves on my PowerBook G4 back in the day - with the trackpad.
I remember Microsoft put gpu makers through hell when they put out the driver framework thing a few years ago? I wish they took trackpads seriously (even for gaming) and forced that synaptics shit out. Maybe people laugh at the idea of gaming with a trackpad but I wish it were possible even if I’m a minority. I wish games could support trackpad gestures too.
Of all the things other copy from Apple, so few copy the 16:10 screen. At least the Surface display is what, 3:2 now? But everyone else is still bloody 16:9.
Gestures are still hard. Scrolling is becoming fine (mostly with recent apps based on GTK3/Qt5), but other gestures are still barely recognized even with hacks, at least for me on Elementary. I think it will still improve over time, but about as slowly as it has in the past.
I’m not picky about the screen, but I am super picky about trackpads from using macs. My dell chrombook feels every bit as good as the Mac. Fortunately for me the Gallium os distro for Chromebooks reuses the chrome os touchpad driver. I dell Precision model at work and that touch pad sucks!
Do they come close in build quality though? I’m legit curious; I haven’t used a Razer laptop in years, but the last one I played with wasn’t super impressive in that regard.
I have a late-2016 Blade Stealth, and the build quality is... just ok. The keyboard (coming from a MacBook Air) took some getting used to. The battery is crap and has swelled up and warped the chassis. Heat has destroyed the adhesisve on the front rubber foot, which has fallen off. The screen has a bezel that might even be larger than the MacBook Air, which is lame.
> I dont have the patience or the know-how to tune the touchpad to be decent in Linux.
I thought it would be an issue too, however Gnome and latest ubuntu fixed issues with trackpad and screen resolution
I get that I'm in the extreme minority here, but I pretty much hate all touchpads, including Apple's. I hate Apple's the least, so I will concede that Apple makes the best touch pads.
I wish all the PC makers would stop trying to copy the Apple model of "all touch surface, and the pad on a rocker for buttons". I'm probably being old and cranky (for context, my very first laptop was an Apple Powerbook 170 with a track ball, and it was AWESOME), but I prefer the days when you could get a consumer laptop that had a touchpad with two discrete buttons. These days, you're generally stuck choosing from some ugly business and gaming laptops if you want real touchpad buttons.
Funny, I liked the trackball laptops as well. I had an old Zenith with one and later a Dell laptop with one (Latitude Xpi iirc). That Dell had MMX, so it would play mp3s in Musicmatch Jukebox without skipping like my desktop at the time would. Desktop trackballs are still a thing; I like my Kensington Expert Mouse Wireless Trackball quite a bit with my mac. The scroll ring feels kind of janky for a $100 mouse but it works.
On the new one, it’s no longer on a rocker. If you manage to deep freeze the kernel, the trackpad stops clicking. The click is somehow created after force touch(?) deems your press to be hard enough for click.
Hello fellow minority. Though I don't like Apple's at all, albeit the last time I used one was in 2014 or 2015 so maybe they're better. I liked my really old Dell Inspiron 1000's better than the Macbooks I've tried. And I used to use a laptop with just a nub in the middle and two buttons below the space bar, that was my favorite, I could actually play FPS games with it, and it meshed well with vim usage. But these days I almost always just use a wireless mouse. It's no extra cost to carry around when I have to carry around a charger, the times I want/need to use a laptop in a suboptimal environment (like on my lap) are so minimal that I can't care too much about the quality of a touchpad. Does it let me tap once to click, tap with two fingers to right click? Good enough.
I could never make touchpads work for me. The only laptops I could tolerate were Lenovo's because of the touchpoint thing. My first MacBook was the first time I had a touchpad I could not only use but actively liked.
But actually my Lenovo with Linux touchpad and Chromebooks are all fine for me today. Though my MacBooks and external Apple touchpad on my desktop are still the best. The only touchpad that still annoys me to the point where I need to use a mouse is a 17" Dell Alienware laptop running Windows 10.
The 'Force Touch' trackpads I am not a fan of at all. I do not like them nearly as much as my 2012 MBP that actually clicks. They had them perfected and then messed with them IMHO.
+1 on that. Especially since the force touch. I've been using Macbooks for 10 years now and just don't understand why other trackpads just don't work flawlessly. For me other trackpads feel like the difference with smartphones and old phone touchscreens. I even enjoy gaming on a Macbook trackpad.
its probably insanely expensive/complex to revisit the cheap commodity touchpad hardware and the crappy drivers that already available. & doesn't pencil out with the razor thin margins for PC laptops
I'd recommend testing a live image of KDE Neon. I loaded it on my Dell Latitude 7370 (distant cousin of the XPS 13) which has a 13" QHD+ touchscreen, and I'm quite impressed with the "out of the box" experience with KDE Neon. There are still a some applications that don't handle the DPI scaling well, but I had that problem on Windows too.
This is the perfect description of why I’ll probably never leave Mac land. I want my technology to work out the box, and Mac does that.
Sure I could probably setup the Linux trackpad to be Mac like if I threw plenty of hours at it, but I don’t want to waste my time like that, not anymore. I did in my youth, but now I’ll just buy the thing that works.
Most Windows PCs which ship with precision drivers and an oversized glass trackpad feel 90% as good as the MacBooks. The Surface line and the new Razer Blade 15 are two examples.
The precision drivers are key. Many manufacturers still haven't adopted them, and they are the main reason why Windows trackpads still get a bad rep.
I like my XPS 13 trackpad :) The mac ones seems too big, suspect it would be in the way and hamper the keyboard. (I haven't used a the newer Mac models enough to be certain). Dells works great on Linux (Arch + KDE)
Surface's trackpad is as good as Mac's even though all other parts of experience is trash.
However, now Mac has this force touchpad which you don't really press, so it recognises all of the presses with no respect to where you do it. Nobody has anything like this and I must tell you that one gets used to it reaaaaaaly quick.
I fix things for a living and spending time “hacking” my OS to make the trackpad tolerable would steal time from that.
I kind of agree with you though, I wish some people would do it. The MacBook trackpad being damn near magic compared to anything else that isn’t a surface is the main thing keeping me from Linux. That being said, I also work with efficiency, and the thought of millions of users “hacking” at their OS in exactly the same way, over and over and over, is just so much wasted potential.
I guess it’s hard to write decent trackpad software for hardware you aren’t building yourself though, but it makes you wonder why companies like dell don’t bother making their hardware worth purchasing by having decent software support for it.
I have no issues with it. Macs may have a better trackpad, but there's absoultely nothing wrong with it. I'm using Arch w/i3 and use whatever stock settings there are.
> I want my technology to work out the box, and Mac does that.
Same here, but with a twist: out of the box, Linux makes it easier for me to install the things I need to do my job. The display, power management, etc. issues are all frustrating, true, but ultimately not as important.
What is your job? What kind of things do you install?
Kind of curious, because no matter what machine I use, every time I start fresh, it takes about a day to get up and running. Linux is even worse because of drivers.
All those things work pretty well on OSX. I really really like Linux, but only on CLI. Every time I touch a desktop running linux I get frustrated. OSX isn't perfect - but as a productive environment, it's the best fit or me personally.
And I'd love to upgrade my 2013 13" mba with an mbp, mainly for the display, but the keyboard issues on recent mbp's make me hesitant of spending that much money on it...
My experience is totally different to yours. Every time I install any desktop linux, I spend hours looking up how to get all kinds of little things working. Macs have their problems (not least of which the crappy hardware which is driving so many developers, including me, away). But difficulty of setup & configuration is not one of them for most people.
Using Linux on a Mac trackpad, I can tap with 3 fingers for a middle (button 2, the wheel button) and so open links in another tab, close tabs, execute selection ...
I find that feature more interesting than gestures. Ymmv.
I agree with the lack of proper touchpad support. There are ways around it, but I'd like to not have to spend a day determining if libinput, mtrack, or synaptec is the right driver for my needs.
Interesting, I've been using a non-touch XPS for about a year now and the feature I've unexpectedly grown to love most is the matt screen, which has great viewing angles and and much less glare.
Look at that screen, indeed: it has a 3:2 aspect ratio, which is practically unheard of in recent Windows laptops. It's good to see someone going for something taller than 16:9 (or even 16:10).
the photo of the lady on the laptop screen on the other end of the webcam is a lie. webcams dont work that low. you see a hand and up someones nose. these cams tick a marketing box and thats it.
I tried one before buying my Spectre and it was pretty nice (keyboard a little squishy), but the real problem is that they're backordered out pretty close to a month at minimum.
If you can deal with that, it might be worth a look.
It is not on the F6 key but it is between F6 and F7 (a new key added with camera symbol on it) as far as I can see in the picture with focus on keyboard.
Where the XPS 13 wins (if I were to buy a new laptop) is Linux compatible hardware. The Huawei looks nice, but I'd need to hear how well it had worked for people.
In practice though I just bought a second hand thinkpad. Mediocre screen but otherwise excellent value and great Linux compatibility.
Go for whatever's cheap and replace it regularly. There's nothing that can be made in small quantities, run off a lithium battery for hundreds of charge cycles, and be durable in a backpack, at that price point.
I got a dell chrome book for $400. Put a reasonable ssd in it for $70, installed John Lewis boot and installed Ubuntu on it. I’m quite pleased with it. Word of warning. Pick a machine with a good trackpad.
There are several laptops in the $300-$500 range that would work depending on your needs. (i.e. the cheaper ones have i3 cpus.) Asus, HP, Dell, Acer, etc. Make sure to select one (though many are) that you can upgrade -- for lots of them you can put in up to 32 GB of RAM (some 64), install an m.2 SSD... I've had my eye on https://www.amazon.com/Acer-E5-575-33BM-15-6-Inch-Notebook-G... for a long time in the event I need to get a new laptop for personal light dev use -- looks like they just refreshed a newer model too, linked from that page, though maybe not worth it if you're going to upgrade it.
I'm pretty disappointed with the compromises I have to make to use a Mac these days. I'm planning on getting one of the new XPS 15s with an i-9 - so excited!
What you don’t like exchanging all your ports for dongles? And the crappy keyboard? Or my favorite “Remind me again later” Because who would ever want the ability to say “no”
Not defending windows, but do you remember when Mac OS allowed you to decline updates you didn’t need? Or better yet, a Linux variant where you can choose.
As a person who has been burnt by overpowered processors in laptops, I'd like to advise you to search for thermal throttling issues and look at the out of the box temperatures.
Even if the laptop works fine, the temperatures could get worse after a couple years of use. You might often need to change the thermal paste and clean the heatsinks and fan.
I would suggest waiting a bit more for extensive tests. OTOH if money is no issue, I'd go for it. i9 in a laptop sounds really cool.
I was going to get the XPS 13 today and I ended up with an HP Spectre x360 13" (newer one--i7-8550U, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD that'll probably eventually be replaced with a 2TB when the price comes down). Installing Fedora on it right now. I'm in on a chunkier trackpad click, and the HP has that over the rather light Dell click that's common across every Dell I tried. Also, I preferred the keyboard on the Spectre x360 and the overall look-and-feel of it, plus the pen (for when I am using Windows) feels a little nicer. I wish I could've found the newer ceramic white Spectre, which I was in on, but it was a two-week wait and the black-and-copper looks very sharp too.
Ultrabooks seem to have basically converged. Everybody's running more or less the same hardware. This has been good for Linux; hopefully my install goes as well.
At a first approximation, everything in the actual machine works. The touchscreen was picked up immediately, the machine stays pretty cool, it's reading about 7h40m in battery life (this is the 4K model with the i7 and 16GB of RAM; I expect more like 4h to 5h). I really like the keyboard, and the keyboard correctly turns off when it's folded back.
This seems at least as good as the XPS 13. Only downside so far is that the pen is a little finicky in Krita, but I haven't tested yet if that's a battery problem (it popped a battery warning right away) or a software problem. But this thing feels really good. I'll probably keep it.
The article mentioned various problems with 4K display. In addition to those it is just too reflective. I ended up with getting a filter for it. It helped, but still even in the office I have to avoid certain angles not to see overhead lamp reflections. The fact that the display opening angle is rather limited has not helped either.
You don't use the trackpad on a lenovo. You don't have to!
Srsly while i do own now a macbook pro at work and really like the touchpad, i'm a touch quicker with the red knob in combination with AwesomeWM as a window manager.
Main advantage: my hands rests on the device and don't have to move below.
I’m in the same boat; I’m fascinated by my colleagues’ ability to hurl their desktop around with macpad gestures, they’re fascinated by being all-keyboard with a tiling window manager (and occasional use of the nipple-thing when I have to click something).
I disable trackpads, as I only ever use them accidentally.
They both seem like great systems. All I know at this point is that I’m set in my ways :)
I've actually taken to using the trackpad more often on my Thinkpad T460p; it seems to me the TrackPoint has actually regressed in recent years; on Linux:
* the default sensitivity is very low; you really have to haul on it to move the pointer significantly. Worse, the hardware starts trying to "correct", making the motion harder and harder to accomplish! (And you can see the correction when you let go completely and the pointer just starts drifting for a while until the correction re-corrects)
* attempting to change the settings results in the kernel driver crashing or something; errors get emitted to dmesg and the device resets. So setting two settings is tricky: you have to loop on setting the first setting, and then once that succeeds w/o crashing, loop on setting the second setting. If that fails, it's back to square 1![1][2]
That said, the Touchpad is not as accurate as the TrackPoint can be, or at least, used to be.
I mostly use an external small wireless mouse now, but that removes a hand from the keyboard. sigh
I run Ubuntu (actually Elementary now) on my XPS 13. Works pretty well. Track pad is not as good as my MacBook was. It also has the graphics card click which is super annoying.
I had a Dell XPS 13 for about 2 months but ended up selling and getting a 2017 Macbook Pro 13 non-touchbar. For the premium you're already spending on an XPS machine, a Mac for slightly more has so much better hardware. The price differential ~300-500$ is more than justified by the FULL metal construction, non-clicky trackpad, and the glorious screen. I immediately regretted my XPS purchase after noticing the screen’s backlight problems and the quality/amount the trackpad depressed while clicking. Though I wish the macbook had more ports and better keyboard, it's not kept me from wanting the XPS back.
Ha. I've seen many a review that calls that out actually. The consequence of edge-to-edge screen. Gotta put that cam somewhere! I'd disable it and get a hi-qual external.
I went with a precision 5520 when I switched from my MacBook Pro and I love it. 32 GB of RAM, centered keyboard/trackpad of a 15" and a tiny screen bezel all with full Linux support.
About the part "Windows 10 spends about 5 minutes (literally!) identifying a bunch of new devices and adding them to the system", to be fair, Windows can run on a gazillion different configuration, while macOS runs only on a few. I've been ranting against Windows for years, but it actually works well now, even if it takes a bit of time for the new device setup.
What? I can plug a 1000 different mice into my mac and they work in seconds. I can plug a 100 different external HDDs, and the same. I can plug in a 1000 different keyboard, and they work the same.
What I'm mostly curious about these posts is, how the heck do you guys switch operating systems that easily? I guess it would work if you are already using Linux or Windows on a Mac hardware but that's gotta be rare.
I mean, hardware is nothing compared to the OS.. I can switch to any other Mac and it would take me a couple hours to be comfortable. That would be it.
If I'm switching to a Dell XPS, I don't really care about the hardware at that point. It's all about software.
I tried doing that a couple months ago when my MBP went bad as Apple doesn't know how to build a keyboard anymore. Bought an XPS 13". I think it has great hardware. Couldn't switch away from macOS. I'd use XPS with macOS over the shitty Macbook Pro any day.
A whole lot of people do everything on the web. They don't even need a laptop at all really because they don't need real applications. Any web kiosk would do. If they're a web developer they might also want an SSH client.
Obviously if a company isn't selling product with OSX installed it's different, but any marketing that suggests it would likely be problematic. Besides, the community has done a pretty good job of identifying compatible hardware
2 is the real violation that got them sued. Obviously it's legal to sell computers that are compatible with OS X. Selling them with OS X installed in violation of Apple's EULA is a good way to end up in court.
> Obviously if a company isn't selling product with OSX installed it's different
> Obviously it's legal to sell computers that are compatible with OS X
Never said it wasn't. Only that most companies wouldn't market their product's alternative illegal uses, as that puts them in a gray area. (Almost every product can be used for illegal purposes after all)
Can't speak for everyone, but I've always been a polyglot on OSes. I'm usually either remoted into a Linux box from a Mac, remoted into a Linux box from Windows, remoted into Windows from a Mac, or several of those at once.
Pretty much all the software I use is cross-platform, and even Windows is a fairly acceptable Unix nowadays, so the biggest transitioning problem I have is keeping track of which modifier keys to use for my keyboard shortcuts.
Ditto; besides Final Cut Pro, Photos, and Sequel Pro, most apps I use on macOS work as well (or nearly so) under Windows.
Agreed that the worst thing is the muscle memory for shortcuts; my pinkie always needs a few hours before it starts to remember which keyboard layout I'm using.
I've heard that the Lightroom and Photoshop experience is better overall on Windows now than Mac. I'm sticking with my 2015 MBP for now, but was wondering if anyone could comment on this? I've seen comments elsewhere about Adobe focusing on Windows more, but I've not been able to find details or a good comparison.
I could go either way; I actually think LR and PS have become harder to use on either platform over the years. But you can tune a high-end PC a little better to get more performance out of both on Windows.
Aperture used to be one of the two _major_ draws of macOS over Windows for me, but Apple really burned that bridge when they dumped Aperture—arguably the best RAW photography workflow tool on the market—and pushed towards Photos, which lacked about 50% of the features that made Aperture amazing (Loupe, star rating, workflows, UI, shortcuts, etc.).
Exactly. I've always bounced between OSes over my career. Switching between them is not that hard at all - just need to mentally page in the key modifiers, shell commands, and other little idioms and pretty quickly I'm running along working.
In my experience I've found inflexibility with respect to OS to be a warning sign that usually means someone isn't going to work well long term as a flexible, open-minded team member. Signs of that at interview time usually push me pretty quickly in a 'no' direction.
>In my experience I've found inflexibility with respect to OS to be a warning sign that usually means someone isn't going to work well long term as a flexible, open-minded team member.
Come on. Someone can be an excellent dev but be made much more efficient by their chosen tools/environment.
Come do some public sector work for a while - you'll see what inflexibility really looks like.
I've been working on a mac after being a long time windows user, and as you say, most of the software I use is cross-platform. The biggest problem is modifier keys, and I still prefer how windows does window management (oh, and finder is garbage).
I use MacOS, Linux and Windows daily (less often Windows these days). The only feature I really miss on other OS's is spotlight, though I can kind of replace it with rofi in Linux world. Also, in my experience the ecosystem of Linux and Windows software is much larger than that of MacOS. Not to mention Mac software is sold at a premium (even things as simple as tab switching or note taking programs).
I still love Macs, but for me it's mostly the hardware (screen, touch pad, etc).
GNOME and KDE have builtin functionality that is pretty close to Spotlight. But from your comment I'm guessing you are using a more minimalistic window manager.
For me, Quick Look (more of a feature than standalone software). I'm using a Windows app[0] which does a good enough job, but without that I'd honestly use my PC even less than I do now.
Beyond that, not having iMessage is a loss. Pages, Keynote, & Numbers are free on Mac, and they're so much nicer to use than LibreOffice IMO.
iMessages for is a big deal for me too. Almost everything else is manageable for me on windows for the most part. For me, this is the one thing that is annoying to not have.
Everyone is different, bug biggest thing I missed was Transmit, as I do a lot with s3. Most of the Linux options seemed lacking in various ways, so I found myself using command line more, which gets the geek in me going, but wasn't as efficient.
I also use Git Tower. Again, command line is of course an option, but I'm more efficient with a UI. Git Kraken isn't bad, but I ran into some weird permissions issues the last time I used it, so I ended up relying on VS Code's git client more.
It takes a few hours for me to switch to any OS. Most of my tools are not OS dependent like (vim, PyCharm, Chrome/Firefox, Sublime), others are default ones (I do not really care which shell script is there or which tool to use to read my emails or store passwords, there are a lot of alternatives)
I guess if you do video editing or staff like that XPS or any other machine is not an option over MBP
I'm surprised no one has mentioned keyboard portability. I find it incredibly hard to switch from ctrl on Windows to cmd on Mac. In college I had to switch frequently between Windows and Mac, and it was a nightmare.
Since then, I've committed to only use MacOS on a Macbook and Windows on a real keyboard. That seems to preserve my muscle memory the best. But things can be rough when I use a Windows laptop or a standalone Mac keyboard.
I am the same, but with the Mac command layout burned into my brain (and thumbs). My solution when I switched to Linux from Mac is to make the control key the one next to the space bar, like command is. Luckily it's super easy to swap control and super or alt (depending on Mac or PC layout) using xkbd on Linux. In MATE and KDE it's in the keyboard settings; in GNOME it's in Tweaks (with Xfce you need to use a config file somehow). I think you can do the same on Windows with autohotkey but I haven't tried.
When I was using an MBP and a Windows desktop, I got a gaming keyboard that let you remap the keys. I swapped the keycaps on the keyboard so that the Control key was where the Command key would be. Of course, this doesn't help if you're using a laptop, but my desktop keyboard remained that way for a while, even after I left OSX on the laptop side.
With respect to Windows on the Macbook Pro, when I used Windows VMs, I would go to the VM preferences and swap the command key mappings so that I could continue using my muscle memory.
How do you usually try to press the command key? If you're going for it with anything other than your thumb, you're doing it wrong. Note that Apple keyboards often have narrower spacebars than PC keyboards, so the command key is closer to the center of the keyboard (and closer to your thumb) than the alt key on a standard PC keyboard.
My solution is to map Ctrl to CapsLock on Windows and Cmd to CapsLock on MacOS. Not perfect by any means but seems to be an ok compromise muscle-memory wise.
At o e point I was switching between Windows and macOS computers on a daily basis. One way to ease the pain of control vs command is to remap your caps lock key to command in macOS and to control in Windows.
For me, most of the software I use is webapps these days (or natively wrapped webapps like VS Code), so the base OS doesn't make a big difference to me. The one exception is requiring a Unix-style terminal, which Windows (mostly) does these days.
That said, I have to work on iOS every now and then, and Apple's tight grip on that toolchain means I'm stuck with a Mac no matter what. If not I'd seriously be considering a laptop like this Dell or a Surface Book next.
I used Linux for everything in college, only switching to Mac when it became clear to me that it was a nicer laptop that had enough Unix for me to get by. Going back the other way, there are a few things Mac OS has that I like, but my day-to-day is IntelliJ, Emacs, Firefox and a terminal, so it's not that big of a problem.
I'll probably never be totally Apple-free. I leave the door open for them to make a decent developer laptop again. And I don't have compelling replacements for, or the money to go down the rabbit hole all at once, for the iPhones, Apple TV, iPads etc. and figure out what to do about my photos and music. But Apple got me by wooing me as a developer. Now that I'm on Linux full-time at home, I can start thinking about how I'd like to solve those problems, where before I wasn't really giving it any thought. Apple should be worried, because we are a bell weather, and you can't expect a platform to thrive that developers despise.
Practice, really. You learn how to do X. You adapt to ~X not being quite X, and later X not being quite ~X. You learn what Xs you care about. You learn what causes ~X to not be X; afterwards ~Y makes more sense.
Maybe I'm alone in this, but I really don't see what anyone likes about Macs or macOS, I bought a rMBP a few years back and it's to this date one of the worst purchases of my life, I hate the touchpad (the clicking thing is much slower than tapping), I hate the keyboard (feels really cheap) and macOS too, mostly due to Finder and Objective C being absolute garbage like nothing else I've seen. Wound up bootcamping it and giving it to my brother.
You're definitely not alone. I agree with everything you said. I'll add that MacOS is like a weird, slow toy rather than a serious work environment. Everyone uses homebrew to do development but that's just a painfully slow version of package managers that have existed on Linux for decades. It might "just work", but it doesn't work at all the way I want it to.
That has nothing to do with Macs vs PCs. Everything with a touchpad gives you a tap to click option, and if you didn't spend enough time with a Mac to realize this then you can't really make a fair assessment of the platform in any way other than hostile first impressions.
Yes, but you can't assume that having tap to click enabled by default is the best default for the general public. It's way too easy for that to lead to a ton of stray clicks for anyone with impaired sensation or dexterity in their fingers. Apple very often likes to err on the side of making things simpler and more accessible by default while keeping the more powerful features hidden where power users can find them and where they won't distract your grandma. This can be a bit annoying at times for power users, but since those features are available to be turned on it's just a momentary annoyance when you're first setting up a new machine.
You can't please everyone, and the people who are looking for things to complain about are pretty low on the list of who you should be trying to please.
I am not looking for things to complain about. And I doubt the parent was too. It's a genuine issue. As far as not being able to please everyone, how many old people are using macbook pros? Is that number more than the number of regular users who prefer a better touchpad?
It might be annoying for a regular user to have that disabled until they figure out how to enable that, it could be literally unusable for a less capable user to have touch to click enabled. If you're not savvy enough to know that you might be able to disable it, you're probably also unsavvy enough that spurious clicks are disastrous, because you aren't comfortable enough to undo things.
I think they may have thought about this a little bit before making their default decisions.
A lot of us think it is the best. I've never liked tap-to-click; I tried it again a year or so ago when my trackpad button went out, and decided it was indeed unusable — too many unintended clicks. (I replaced the trackpad.)
Anyway, "the clicking thing is much slower than tapping" is just not true if you're used to clicking.
I figured I'd get used to it eventually, so I didn't want to just up and change what seemed like it should have been a good default, what you're suggesting would mean basically turning off a hardware "feature". In the end it just wasn't for me and I didn't accept it until I had basically switched to using my desktop machine full time.
I typically give things like this their fair shot - some of them I get used to, like Windows switching to grouped single icons without titles... I hated it at first, but eventually it made some sense to me. Only when I've absolutely given up on them do I bother changing settings.
I try my best not to let those negative first impressions stick, to give them a real shot, and this was part of the machine I'd purchased, I figured I better try it...
A lot of us use multiple environments every single day. Linux/Unix/Windows for a variety of server environments, MacOS for daily life / photo editing / web dev / IOS dev, Linux for web development, Windows for gaming. Switching between them isn't really much of an issue at this point, unless you're trying to literally move your entire life to a new environment. I use each for their suitable tasks.
I have both Mac and Windows 10 running simultaneously in my office at home and I keep getting Ctrl-W and Cmd-W confused when I try to close a browser tab. Maybe I'll get used to it eventually. I hope so.
Yeah. Of course. And that's what I was referring to. There is no reason for a separate cmd key to exist. Some stuff is switched to cmd (copy, paste, select all) and other stuff stays with ctrl (ctrl+c, ctrl+d). See now I can't even remember how to close a tab in chrome. Is that cmd+w or ctrl+w? All of this is really arbitrary.
It would be sent to whatever process is attached to the current pseudo terminal. (When I said "remote" I was more referring to the SSH scenario, but the mechanism is the same...)
Ok, so that means the remote vs local logic doesn't apply. In fact none does. The demarcations are arbitrary. Cmd is randomly used and ctrl is randomly used. Even if there is a remote vs local rule, why not make ctrl do something for local programs? Do you use a separate keyboard for your ssh and another one for email? No. The keys switch contexts according to the active program.
Unix programs use it quite frequently. Photoshop requires multiple modifier keys, you can't get away with just a single modifier because there are too many keyboard shortcuts.
> I guess it would work if you are already using Linux or Windows on a Mac hardware but that's gotta be rare.
I ran Linux on my MBP up until the touchbar nonsense, then I switched to a Dell XPS with Ubuntu preinstalled. The experience has been great, probably better hardware support under Linux than on the Mac.
> If I'm switching to a Dell XPS, I don't really care about the hardware at that point. It's all about software.
Switch to cross platform software alternatives before you switch, or don't get locked in in first place. This way you just replicate your environment on the new platform for the most part.
> how the heck do you guys switch operating systems that easily?
My answer to this is, use cross-platform software as much as possible and avoid anything platform-specific (especially if dealing with Windows or MacOS). I use a Mac at work and a Linux (with KDE) at home, and hardly even notice the switch between these two environments. A terminal is a terminal, and a browser is a browser...
I switch between all three major OSs on a regular basis. With so much of our software in the cloud it's not really an issue. The funny thing is that each OS has some apps that you really miss on the other ones. But it's not that onesided and you can be productive on any of them.
I'm so glad you mentioned this, I find that when I have to switch back and forth between mac and windows, I struggle with muscle memory switching from ctrl to cmd, and on mac I always struggled to figure out which window is my active window.
Such tiny things, but it's one of the things that has kept me on windows (even though I used a mac most of the time for the past two years).
Some of my co-workers switch between mac, windows & linux without skipping a beat.
Web-based applications will all be the same, CLI programs will mostly be the same between any nix operations system, homebrew is conceptually not that different from any other package manager. Most IDEs are very portable. What's the main hurdle in switching from macOS to any other nix?
I'm not a Mac user or a Linux user. I'm a Unix-like user, and pretty much everything else is gravy. Switching from iTerm2 to Tilix doesn't faze me; zsh still works the same. Literally the only apps I use that are Mac-constrained are Logic Pro X (I have a dedicated machine for that) and the occasional Adobe app--and I dual-boot my desktop and my primary laptop with Windows, so I care much less about that there, too.
Oh, and Keynote is nice, but web Keynote is fine for my purposes. But everything I use for my actual job is either a web app (LucidChart, etc.) or is eminently portable (Unix tools, VSCode, etc.).
Most stuff I use is the same across OSes. Chrome, Slack, IntelliJ, VS Code. I use WSL on Windows 10 to get my linux command line and then terminal is about as good as any other.
I'm a MBP user but i just setup a new Windows work computer yesterday. No kidding it took me 10+ hours to get all the drivers and customisation done.
I also had an XPS 13 I bought 10 years ago. I really loved it as it was great hardware at the time- but it actually fell apart in a few years as they are made with cheap plastic. Their build quality might be a bit higher than other laptops, but if you're after MBP quality the Surface Pro/Books are the next best thing.
I agree. I've used windows and Linux all my life and macos absolutely kills my productivity. Simple stuff I take for granted in a UI are not present or hidden away. I can imagine similar pain for somebody coming from macos to windows. However I feel that it is possible to train yourself again. I'd only do that as a last resort though.
I think these days we spend 50% of our time in web apps which are OS independent. And a lot of the rest (for developers) is in cross-platform editors with customizable keybindings.
I use both macOS and Ubuntu every day and have no issues switching.
Quoting what I read somewhere else, people in both camps just greatly exaggerate the difference between Linux and MacOS. I've been using both for a couple of years and this year I made the full switch to Arch Linux + i3 on a Carbon X1.
Wonderful experience so far. Pretty much the only two things I miss are the wonderful built-in multi-language dictionary and good HiDPI support. That's it. In other aspects it has been much better than MacOS for a developer. Programs even crash much less frequently as well.
In terms of durability, Dell XPS is a consumer-grade product and should not be relied on for any serious work. The only real alternatives to Apple Macbook in terms of build quality, design and performance are ThinkPad X1 Carbon[1] and Dell Precision 5530[2], which is XPS business-grade counterpart.
Rather than say something snarky I would be interested to know what makes you say it is consumer-grade and should not be relied on for serious work. I use mine to run multiple businesses and my bank account suggests I do serious work.
Unlike its consumer counterpart, XPS, the Precision 5530 passed 14 tests for for MIL-SPEC durability, the standards that the U.S. Military equipment must pass for ruggedness. That means it can be operated in extremely hot and cold environments (as low as minus 20.2 degrees Fahrenheit to as high as 140 degrees), survive the shocks of drops and gusts of dusts, among other things."
So most everything out there including everything Apple is consumer grade? Ok. Some people (including me) see military grade as enhanced build of the regular product but whatever. Potato, tomato.
ThinkPads used by developers (X & T) meet the same military-grade standards[1]. It depends what do you want to happen, when your machine hits the ground.
The XPS line is listed on their business website and I bought it using a small business account, so clearly your unsubstantiated statement is not in agreement with Dell's opinion.
This is a side note, but many years ago before I began using Macs, I found PC maker websites baffling and hard to understand.
Today, that continues. I click the Lenovo link and hit a popup asking for my email. I decline that. I try to hit "View or customize" in Firefox, and that fails. I switch to Chrome, and again have to decline giving my email, and that works. But then I hit a screen that says,
"We value your opinion!
After your visit, would you be willing to provide some quick feedback? It will only take a minute."
No.
Then I get six options to choose from, ranging from about $1,100 up through $2,000. What are the differences among these? I'm not entirely sure.
I know I can wade through these and figure them out, but the user experience doesn't seem very good.
I’m surprised at the lack of comparison to the X1C6 in the rest of the writeup. It is what I chose over the XPS, and couldn’t be happier with it (running f28).
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 296 ms ] threadEDIT: To be clear, my issues were resolved after an update back in Dec 2017: http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDet...
"Optimize CPU loading to Improve EE noise" is specifically one of the issues that BIOS update addresses.
As a happy lifelong Windows user, surrounded by programmers who call me insane (or an idiot, even) for liking it, I was curious to learn more about what a developer who's used to Mac thinks about the Windows 10 dev experience. (notably for a more honest impression of what I might be missing)
Aside from the potential to run into show-stopping problems like that, you may run into "big company" problems if you work for one, like I do. That is, VPN support within WSL only half-works, and because it's Windows you may be forced to follow domain policies that require Windows Defender to run, which slows down WSL, and blocks you from Insider builds that could fix WSL problems.
You can run a Linux VM on Windows instead of WSL. Which has its own set of problems and is overall a worse experience than developing on macOS, in my opinion.
So currently while, as a Mac user, I actually prefer the Windows 10 UI, the hardware competition, the keyboards, etc., I can't use WSL. Side-projects that you can adapt to WSL's limitations are one thing, but making it work as your development environment for a wide-range of professional projects is another. I saw all this with some actual sadness because I'm tired of investing in Apple when they've basically abandoned macOS and are making so many hardware choices I disagree with, that affect me (keyboard, touch bar).
That was only the last and final blocking issue I ran into, after a series of minor (or at least, not serious) problems that I powered through during too many late nights.
Couple of things:
- Hyper-V. Was excited for this and tried it, since I had already set up Docker for Windows and pointed the CLI tools in WSL at it. However, Hyper-V didn't appear to have any support for the "shared folder" concept that VMWare and VirtualBox do. Is your only option here to set up Windows share and use Samba?
- I dislike running VMs generally, but would have gone that route if I could have gotten a setup I liked. However, after reconfiguring everything to use VirtualBox (including Docker) and creating a single VM there to do Docker and Linux stuff on, it seemed to tax the machine too much (i5 8GB SB2). With a beefy machine that would have worked better, but Windows 10 isn't that appealing if I have to buy the highest-spec machines and run VMs... that's exactly where it was 5-10 years ago.
I have a lot more to say about WSL and Windows 10, and it probably deserves a blog post. I haven't returned the Surface yet because I'm kinda in love with it, but also if I can't do all my work on it, then it's not something I need to own.
Re. Hyper-V: yeah, I do a Samba mount. This in my experience actually performs a ton better than VirtualBox shared folders, but it's been a long time. I have no idea how it compares to VMware's implementation. (VMware and VirtualBox also have the ability to cleanly virtualize a graphics-accelerated Linux desktop, which is not something I need or care about, but might be a show-stopper for both WSL and Hyper-V if you do.)
VirtualBox shared folders had their own problems. `npm` wants to create symlinks for commands provided by packages, but VirtualBox doesn't support symlinks by default on Windows shares. So you have to execute an arcane command to enable that feature -- every time you restart the computer.
Interesting to hear that performance is decent with the Samba share. I presumed it would be otherwise. In that case, Hyper-V with Samba may be my last shot at getting the machine to work for me... we'll see if I can muster any more enthusiasm.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_junction_point
[EDIT: Also, reading GP, it looks like their issue is something about VirtualBox support for symlinks, not Windows support for symlinks. Symlinks are enabled in Windows by default, so they'd only have to do something special if they were on a domain that disabled them in the group policy--but in that case, they wouldn't be able to turn them back on themselves on a reboot anyway.]
Which WSL distro did you use? Perhaps only works under, say, Ubuntu 18.04... (not perfect, but better, perhaps)?
This is the biggest problem I have with Windows. Microsoft lets corporate IT depts fuck it up. Such control should not be possible. It's my computer, I should be able to use it as I like.
At least they shouldn't be able to override existing functionality, like disabling edge and windows store.
I'm completely at ease with developing on Windows now, and I've "done Linux" since 1994, worked long for one of the major Linux vendors and even contributed a bit to the Linux kernel (networking and firewall), but if I had to do system administration I might have a stronger opinion (simply because I'M so sued to Unix ways in general).
It is like this Monty Python scene https://youtu.be/WboggjN_G-4?t=69 when people start arguing about their operating system.
For the last couple of years I looked at how nature (biology) "computes", not just neurons, the entire bio-chemistry with its machinery. Now that is something different - while everything people put on their computers works on pretty much the exact same principles unless you zoom all the way in to nanometer scale (figuratively speaking).
I would also clearly prefer windows for projects supposed to run on windows servers, and Linux for projects supposed to run on Linux. Mac OS Server is utter crap and completely useless, so Apple doesn't have that going for it.
They mention that they also use an iPad and other setups, which suggests they’re doing rather platform-agnostic dev work. Once you shell into a box in the cloud, only the keyboard and screen are any different.
I stick to my Mac exclusively for photo and video work, but I can get most things done on Windows as needed (though a few workflows are a little more annoying than I'd like in the absence of Spotlight, Automator, and a few Mac-only niche apps I love to use).
We use a macbook air at home, it still runs just as good as when we got it. I've always had issues with Windows where the out of the box experience is incredible, but 2 years later, I'm waiting 5 minutes after start for, 'things to finish' before the computer begins to feel fast again.
Whenever I look at replacing the Air, I get nearly to the end of the checkout with a new macbook pro 13" (what I use for work), when I get a sick feeling that I shouldn't be spending $2k for our house 'in front of the tv' laptop.
Macs for the most part in the house are trouble free too. But suddenly apps not launching or just beachballing is not uncommon after high number of suspend/resume cycles without reboot. Truth be told it's amazing in OS land right now - Fedora/Ubuntu, W10, macOS all do a number of things right without a sweat.
One thing that Win10 on my X1C6 has macOS beat is speed to the desktop after suspend. I don't know about TouchID MBPs but connected standby + Fingerprint logon on Windows 10 makes the resume to desktop experience blazing fast.
Everyone: don't install Flash (built in to IE/Edge, if you need it, and you likely don't), don't install Java as much as you can avoid it (find alternatives or standalone installs), and install iTunes only from the Microsoft Store if you want it (goodbye Apple Updater, you will not be missed).
Those recommendations alone take care of so much startup gunk.
Power Users: check Startup applications and Services in Task Manager's Advanced/Details view from time to time. Task Manager in Windows 10 lets you disable Startup applications directly without needing any other tool. Many third party services you can switch from Automatic to Automatic (Delayed Start) and lose no functionality, but get out of the Windows startup "hot path". I have backup software that absolutely needed to be (Delayed Start), not just because it was slowing Windows startup but also because it was trying to access system/network resources before Windows was ready for them anyway, yet the installer did not default it to be (Delayed Start) up until just recently. (If you build Windows Services, consider defaulting your service installers for Delayed Start or Trigger Start. You don't need to be in the startup hot path, you are more likely to be getting in the way.)
In some ways, the transition was pretty painless. I mainly use JetBrains products, so there was very little pain in the switch there. I expected that, which is one of the reasons why I decided to switch in the first place.
However, what I hadn't predicted was how few of the quality-of-life tweaks I was using had equivalents on Windows. For example, I was using the clipboard history feature extensively on Alfred when I was using Mac, and Ditto is barely a replacement for Windows. Recording screencasts with Screenflow on Mac is painless, and Windows (at the time) didn't have a comparable equivalent. The built-in functionality for window management in Windows is not bad, but it doesn't compare to Spectacle for flexibility.
Those are just a few examples, but collectively, these ended up adding a surprisingly painful amount of friction to my development process, even when the IDE was exactly the same. I finally ended up admitting defeat and switching back to MacOS.
I might conclude that if you're using the out-of-the-box, platform default environment, Visual Studio and Windows 10 are probably going to give a better experience than XCode + vanilla MacOS. Then again, if you're the kind of person whose .vimrc has decades of tweaks, you'll probably be happier in Linux. Basically, my view is to just let everyone do what they want and what they feel comfortable with, coexist with them, and don't try to convert/proselytize in general, which I believe is a pretty non-controversial stance.
Good news! That is being fixed in the next release of Windows 10: http://clipdiary.com/clipboard-articles/view-windows-clipboa...
> The built-in functionality for window management in Windows is not bad, but it doesn't compare to Spectacle for flexibility.
You can actually download extra utilities for this. I like switcher (lets me search open windows by name), but there are quite a few others. The entire Windows shell is replaceable if you want to go that far.
I've never had a problem recording screen casts, lots of software options have always existed there, and they only keep getting better.
To get the full feature set of ScreenFlow, multiple apps would be needed though, I haven't seen any single app that does it all, although one may exist.
Also what Window Management features does Windows not have? I generally use the hotkeys for everything, without issue. I wish it was easier to do things like splitting my display into 3, but again lots of 3rd party utilities exist to expand the functionality out.
> Then again, if you're the kind of person whose .vimrc has decades of tweaks, you'll probably be happier in Linux.
This is how I feel about Windows, my path environments, custom aliases, and utility scripts laying around. :)
tho win 10's default privacy settings leave a lot to be desired :(
There's also a Mac program called SuperDuper! that makes bootable copies of drives, so I can clone my internal drive to an external USB, and if/when my internal drive fails, I can actually boot directly from the cloned USB drive, just by plugging it in during the Mac startup sequence. It has saved my bacon several times. I don't think there's a Windows equivalent, unless that has changed.
Here's a video of the sleep / snooze light in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT6siXyIjvQ
Aside from it being cool/delightful, it's also useful. When you close the lid, the light initially stays fully on, until the system has actually entered sleep mode. If it stays fully lit (and doesn't start 'breathing'), it's a hint that the machine hasn't actually gone to sleep. Do not put a non-sleeping MacBook in a backpack, or it will get insanely hot to touch...
- You get three clipboards in OS X. Windows gives you 1
- all of the UNIX utilities work (find, grep, xargs, they're all there), all the syscalls work. Because it really is UNIX
- readline shortcuts are available everywhere out of the box. Windows confines me to Cygwin and Emacs
- Cygwin is okay ($PATH versus %PATH% annoys me), but it's not even close to Homebrew
- Visual Studio is a disaster most of the time I use it. YMMV
- a lot of stuff does not run on Windows (most memorably, Swift) whereas almost everything runs on Debian and most things run on OS X
I have a Windows laptop and I've resorted to running Debian on VMware and ssh'ing in with Putty/Xming. I'm surrounded by programmers who openly mock OS X ("you can't develop on a mac!") and tend to stick to Microsoft Approved Software Component Framework -type stuff.
To be fair, I haven't tried WSL. I tried to install Docker, but I was told my top-o'-the-line PC needed another $140 to play that game. Crappy DLC is all it is to me.
Interested to know why you say that VS is a disaster?
- I can hit C-F and count to 2 before Find in All Files opens
- "9 build errors. Build successful" [0]
- random pain points [1]
- intellisense is often not what I want (though sometimes it is) so I alternate between Esc & Tab
- you can't make this stuff up [2]
Maybe I just need to reinstall. The window/panel layout is great, I will say. It's easy to use. It's familiar for a lot of people.
[0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17703004/visual-studio-d...
[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24468370/linker-cannot-o...
[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=visual+studio+has+stopped+wo...
But, I still find myself using my MacBook Pro (provided by work) for almost everything even at home.
Two things that keep me in the Mac land.
1. Retina Display and the 16:10 aspect ratio. 2. Smooth, and usable touchpad.
XPS13's display is too rectangle and I'm not watching movies in it. It feels too cramped for looking at code. GNOME out of the box does not do fractional scaling (125%) hence everything looks either too big or too small to my taste.
I dont have the patience or the know-how to tune the touchpad to be decent in Linux.
2) I'm far from an expert on this: I don't know why it's taken more than a decade to figure out trackpad motion.
Patents?
I legit used to no-scope people in Halo Combat Evolves on my PowerBook G4 back in the day - with the trackpad.
I remember Microsoft put gpu makers through hell when they put out the driver framework thing a few years ago? I wish they took trackpads seriously (even for gaming) and forced that synaptics shit out. Maybe people laugh at the idea of gaming with a trackpad but I wish it were possible even if I’m a minority. I wish games could support trackpad gestures too.
Also I meant 3840x* above.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cultofmac.com/210380/apple-...
The touchpad is really good, though.
(I have nothing constructive to add here, I just wanted there to be some opposition to the idea that Apple have the perfect touchpad)
I wish all the PC makers would stop trying to copy the Apple model of "all touch surface, and the pad on a rocker for buttons". I'm probably being old and cranky (for context, my very first laptop was an Apple Powerbook 170 with a track ball, and it was AWESOME), but I prefer the days when you could get a consumer laptop that had a touchpad with two discrete buttons. These days, you're generally stuck choosing from some ugly business and gaming laptops if you want real touchpad buttons.
But actually my Lenovo with Linux touchpad and Chromebooks are all fine for me today. Though my MacBooks and external Apple touchpad on my desktop are still the best. The only touchpad that still annoys me to the point where I need to use a mouse is a 17" Dell Alienware laptop running Windows 10.
Sure I could probably setup the Linux trackpad to be Mac like if I threw plenty of hours at it, but I don’t want to waste my time like that, not anymore. I did in my youth, but now I’ll just buy the thing that works.
I have no idea why this is the case? Patents or too expensive to justify?
Genuinely curious
The precision drivers are key. Many manufacturers still haven't adopted them, and they are the main reason why Windows trackpads still get a bad rep.
However, now Mac has this force touchpad which you don't really press, so it recognises all of the presses with no respect to where you do it. Nobody has anything like this and I must tell you that one gets used to it reaaaaaaly quick.
I kind of agree with you though, I wish some people would do it. The MacBook trackpad being damn near magic compared to anything else that isn’t a surface is the main thing keeping me from Linux. That being said, I also work with efficiency, and the thought of millions of users “hacking” at their OS in exactly the same way, over and over and over, is just so much wasted potential.
I guess it’s hard to write decent trackpad software for hardware you aren’t building yourself though, but it makes you wonder why companies like dell don’t bother making their hardware worth purchasing by having decent software support for it.
Same here, but with a twist: out of the box, Linux makes it easier for me to install the things I need to do my job. The display, power management, etc. issues are all frustrating, true, but ultimately not as important.
Different folks have different priorities.
Kind of curious, because no matter what machine I use, every time I start fresh, it takes about a day to get up and running. Linux is even worse because of drivers.
In my hardware that's where Linux excels over Windows. YMMV.
And I'd love to upgrade my 2013 13" mba with an mbp, mainly for the display, but the keyboard issues on recent mbp's make me hesitant of spending that much money on it...
I use Linux and Mac daily and I probably spend a comparable amount of time on configuring both.
You just don't feel the pain that you're used to.
I find that feature more interesting than gestures. Ymmv.
In many environments I don't like the reflections of a bright window behind me or the ceiling office lights.
You can buy matte stickers to put on glossy Mac screens, but they can be hard to apply well without bubbles.
In practice though I just bought a second hand thinkpad. Mediocre screen but otherwise excellent value and great Linux compatibility.
Almost everything has worked out of the box, and upgrades to Thinkpads are pretty easy (if you don't immediately spring for one with an SSD).
Can't you just change your settings on preferences?
You might find this link useful: https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-Dell-XPS-15-9570-might-inh...
Even if the laptop works fine, the temperatures could get worse after a couple years of use. You might often need to change the thermal paste and clean the heatsinks and fan.
I would suggest waiting a bit more for extensive tests. OTOH if money is no issue, I'd go for it. i9 in a laptop sounds really cool.
Ultrabooks seem to have basically converged. Everybody's running more or less the same hardware. This has been good for Linux; hopefully my install goes as well.
Thanks
This seems at least as good as the XPS 13. Only downside so far is that the pen is a little finicky in Krita, but I haven't tested yet if that's a battery problem (it popped a battery warning right away) or a software problem. But this thing feels really good. I'll probably keep it.
Srsly while i do own now a macbook pro at work and really like the touchpad, i'm a touch quicker with the red knob in combination with AwesomeWM as a window manager.
Main advantage: my hands rests on the device and don't have to move below.
I disable trackpads, as I only ever use them accidentally.
They both seem like great systems. All I know at this point is that I’m set in my ways :)
* the default sensitivity is very low; you really have to haul on it to move the pointer significantly. Worse, the hardware starts trying to "correct", making the motion harder and harder to accomplish! (And you can see the correction when you let go completely and the pointer just starts drifting for a while until the correction re-corrects)
* attempting to change the settings results in the kernel driver crashing or something; errors get emitted to dmesg and the device resets. So setting two settings is tricky: you have to loop on setting the first setting, and then once that succeeds w/o crashing, loop on setting the second setting. If that fails, it's back to square 1![1][2]
That said, the Touchpad is not as accurate as the TrackPoint can be, or at least, used to be.
I mostly use an external small wireless mouse now, but that removes a hand from the keyboard. sigh
[1]: Here is another user with the same issue, though he doesn't fully realize it: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/58c0dn/t460s_trac...
[2]: https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-input/msg51145.html but alas, no response.
I would expect a longtime Lenovo user to know that "the red knob" is not the official unofficial name for that object. :-)
Sorry, I was just making a crass joke. The name I had in mind is rather anatomical: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick#Informal_names .
That mostly fixed the chirping I had. Still get it for a few milliseconds here and there, but it's nothing like it was before.
I love my mid-2012 MBP, I hope it lasts forever but like many I'm weighing my options.
- Amazing touchpad, no need for a mouse at all
- Light, yet powerful and great battery life
- best in class display
- being able to easily copy and paste between iphone <-> macbook
- being able to easily send files between all osx/ios devices with zero hassle
- being able to take calls on my macbook and transfer them to the phone if needed
- bluetooth headphones working rock solid, switching between devices seamless
etc
OSX being somewhat more bearable than windows and slightly worse for my work than linux is not the most important thing to me.
that's the number one. I have not seen any other laptop where the touchpad is usable.
- Can you reduce the keyboard light to 0 ?
I mean, hardware is nothing compared to the OS.. I can switch to any other Mac and it would take me a couple hours to be comfortable. That would be it.
If I'm switching to a Dell XPS, I don't really care about the hardware at that point. It's all about software.
I tried doing that a couple months ago when my MBP went bad as Apple doesn't know how to build a keyboard anymore. Bought an XPS 13". I think it has great hardware. Couldn't switch away from macOS. I'd use XPS with macOS over the shitty Macbook Pro any day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psystar_Corporation
Obviously if a company isn't selling product with OSX installed it's different, but any marketing that suggests it would likely be problematic. Besides, the community has done a pretty good job of identifying compatible hardware
http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
1) Was kind of a scam
2) Sold computers with OS X already installed
2 is the real violation that got them sued. Obviously it's legal to sell computers that are compatible with OS X. Selling them with OS X installed in violation of Apple's EULA is a good way to end up in court.
> Obviously if a company isn't selling product with OSX installed it's different
> Obviously it's legal to sell computers that are compatible with OS X
Never said it wasn't. Only that most companies wouldn't market their product's alternative illegal uses, as that puts them in a gray area. (Almost every product can be used for illegal purposes after all)
Pretty much all the software I use is cross-platform, and even Windows is a fairly acceptable Unix nowadays, so the biggest transitioning problem I have is keeping track of which modifier keys to use for my keyboard shortcuts.
Agreed that the worst thing is the muscle memory for shortcuts; my pinkie always needs a few hours before it starts to remember which keyboard layout I'm using.
Aperture used to be one of the two _major_ draws of macOS over Windows for me, but Apple really burned that bridge when they dumped Aperture—arguably the best RAW photography workflow tool on the market—and pushed towards Photos, which lacked about 50% of the features that made Aperture amazing (Loupe, star rating, workflows, UI, shortcuts, etc.).
In my experience I've found inflexibility with respect to OS to be a warning sign that usually means someone isn't going to work well long term as a flexible, open-minded team member. Signs of that at interview time usually push me pretty quickly in a 'no' direction.
Come on. Someone can be an excellent dev but be made much more efficient by their chosen tools/environment.
Come do some public sector work for a while - you'll see what inflexibility really looks like.
I use MacOS, Linux and Windows daily (less often Windows these days). The only feature I really miss on other OS's is spotlight, though I can kind of replace it with rofi in Linux world. Also, in my experience the ecosystem of Linux and Windows software is much larger than that of MacOS. Not to mention Mac software is sold at a premium (even things as simple as tab switching or note taking programs).
I still love Macs, but for me it's mostly the hardware (screen, touch pad, etc).
Beyond that, not having iMessage is a loss. Pages, Keynote, & Numbers are free on Mac, and they're so much nicer to use than LibreOffice IMO.
[0]https://github.com/xupefei/QuickLook
I also use Git Tower. Again, command line is of course an option, but I'm more efficient with a UI. Git Kraken isn't bad, but I ran into some weird permissions issues the last time I used it, so I ended up relying on VS Code's git client more.
I guess if you do video editing or staff like that XPS or any other machine is not an option over MBP
Since then, I've committed to only use MacOS on a Macbook and Windows on a real keyboard. That seems to preserve my muscle memory the best. But things can be rough when I use a Windows laptop or a standalone Mac keyboard.
Fixed some wrist pain I was having though from cmd-tabbing with the default layout!
With respect to Windows on the Macbook Pro, when I used Windows VMs, I would go to the VM preferences and swap the command key mappings so that I could continue using my muscle memory.
How do you usually try to press the command key? If you're going for it with anything other than your thumb, you're doing it wrong. Note that Apple keyboards often have narrower spacebars than PC keyboards, so the command key is closer to the center of the keyboard (and closer to your thumb) than the alt key on a standard PC keyboard.
I seem to be switching based on the type of keyboard I'm using. Whenever I open bootcamp I have to consciously remember to use ctrl not cmd.
That said, I have to work on iOS every now and then, and Apple's tight grip on that toolchain means I'm stuck with a Mac no matter what. If not I'd seriously be considering a laptop like this Dell or a Surface Book next.
I'll probably never be totally Apple-free. I leave the door open for them to make a decent developer laptop again. And I don't have compelling replacements for, or the money to go down the rabbit hole all at once, for the iPhones, Apple TV, iPads etc. and figure out what to do about my photos and music. But Apple got me by wooing me as a developer. Now that I'm on Linux full-time at home, I can start thinking about how I'd like to solve those problems, where before I wasn't really giving it any thought. Apple should be worried, because we are a bell weather, and you can't expect a platform to thrive that developers despise.
That has nothing to do with Macs vs PCs. Everything with a touchpad gives you a tap to click option, and if you didn't spend enough time with a Mac to realize this then you can't really make a fair assessment of the platform in any way other than hostile first impressions.
I think they may have thought about this a little bit before making their default decisions.
Anyway, "the clicking thing is much slower than tapping" is just not true if you're used to clicking.
I typically give things like this their fair shot - some of them I get used to, like Windows switching to grouped single icons without titles... I hated it at first, but eventually it made some sense to me. Only when I've absolutely given up on them do I bother changing settings.
I try my best not to let those negative first impressions stick, to give them a real shot, and this was part of the machine I'd purchased, I figured I better try it...
Enabling tap to click does not disable the mechanical or haptic click mechanisms, nor does it disable any other functionality.
System Preferences -> Trackpad -> Tap To Click
Are you sure you had a Mac because this isn't hard to find.
> Objective C
Why are you using it ? Swift has been the default and its a fantastic language.
The modifiers serve two different purposes: control+something is sent to the remote host, cmd+something is handled by the application.
I ran Linux on my MBP up until the touchbar nonsense, then I switched to a Dell XPS with Ubuntu preinstalled. The experience has been great, probably better hardware support under Linux than on the Mac.
Switch to cross platform software alternatives before you switch, or don't get locked in in first place. This way you just replicate your environment on the new platform for the most part.
Best computer I've ever owned. Like a fine watch.
You don't need Bootcamp anymore and a USB Windows 10 install takes minutes.
MacOS is abandonware at this point, IMO.
My answer to this is, use cross-platform software as much as possible and avoid anything platform-specific (especially if dealing with Windows or MacOS). I use a Mac at work and a Linux (with KDE) at home, and hardly even notice the switch between these two environments. A terminal is a terminal, and a browser is a browser...
Such tiny things, but it's one of the things that has kept me on windows (even though I used a mac most of the time for the past two years).
Some of my co-workers switch between mac, windows & linux without skipping a beat.
Oh, and Keynote is nice, but web Keynote is fine for my purposes. But everything I use for my actual job is either a web app (LucidChart, etc.) or is eminently portable (Unix tools, VSCode, etc.).
The following shifts Ctrl/Win/Alt one to the left:
Add this to `~/.Xmodmap`, add it to autorun (KDE and Cinnamon will autostart, Gnome needs a kick in the pants): `xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap`You can't use this on Wayland, has to be on X11, which is fine with me because Wayland has other issues.
Now you can copy/paste/cut/etc using Alt key (which is now mapped to Ctrl).
I also had an XPS 13 I bought 10 years ago. I really loved it as it was great hardware at the time- but it actually fell apart in a few years as they are made with cheap plastic. Their build quality might be a bit higher than other laptops, but if you're after MBP quality the Surface Pro/Books are the next best thing.
I use both macOS and Ubuntu every day and have no issues switching.
I did change some shortcuts so that run=cmd+shift+g instead of alt+f2 and f4 to work like Mac OS but that's it really.
Wonderful experience so far. Pretty much the only two things I miss are the wonderful built-in multi-language dictionary and good HiDPI support. That's it. In other aspects it has been much better than MacOS for a developer. Programs even crash much less frequently as well.
[1] https://www3.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x/Th...
[2] http://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-laptops-and-noteboo...
Unlike its consumer counterpart, XPS, the Precision 5530 passed 14 tests for for MIL-SPEC durability, the standards that the U.S. Military equipment must pass for ruggedness. That means it can be operated in extremely hot and cold environments (as low as minus 20.2 degrees Fahrenheit to as high as 140 degrees), survive the shocks of drops and gusts of dusts, among other things."
[1] https://www3.lenovo.com/hk/en/thisisthinkpad/innovation/thin...
Today, that continues. I click the Lenovo link and hit a popup asking for my email. I decline that. I try to hit "View or customize" in Firefox, and that fails. I switch to Chrome, and again have to decline giving my email, and that works. But then I hit a screen that says,
"We value your opinion!
After your visit, would you be willing to provide some quick feedback? It will only take a minute."
No.
Then I get six options to choose from, ranging from about $1,100 up through $2,000. What are the differences among these? I'm not entirely sure.
I know I can wade through these and figure them out, but the user experience doesn't seem very good.
https://www.razer.com/gaming-laptops/razer-blade