Funny how they are 'Updating the Apple store'... As if they couldn't do this behind the screens... Big attempt to overhype their already overhyped products.. Losers!
edit: typo
Probably because it didn't add much to the discussion, which is actually what down-voting is technically supposed to be used for. Makes sense, I wouldn't want this comment to be up towards the top - it's just you saying you want to buy a MBP.
This may sound weird, but I'm most curious to see how the terminal looks on a retina display (when Apple or someone like iTerm makes one for it). I think having paper-resolution monospaced fonts will be awesome.
I know that true hackers don't anti-alias monotype fonts, but I have been using anti-aliased Consolas for a few years now. It is a font best-designed coding books use (http://www.abookapart.com/), and it should only look better, not worse, on print-like display.
The system will upscale it to the same physical height by doubling the pixel size of it. No monocle needed (though highly recommended for its long-lasting style).
Should clear this up. There is an updated MacBook Air line (11" and 13"). There is an updated MacBook Pro line (13" and 15" with 'normal' screen, same chassis and updated internals). And then there is a new 15" MacBook Pro with a 2880 x 1800 screen and is 0.71" thick. I like to dub this one the MacBook Pro Air.
You can change the DPI in Windows. Not all apps properly support high DPI settings, but that probably won't be different on OSX, at least in the beginning. What you can't do in Windows is have different DPI settings for different displays, and I wonder how a retina MacBook will work with a non-retina external display.
As a 2011 MacBook Air user, my biggest envy is USB 3.0. Thunderbolt accessories have been few and far between, and then priced at an exorbitant premium.
But hey, they finally made a Thunderbolt Firewire adapter cable.
Seagate has a $99 ThunderBolt dock available but figure an extra $50 for a cable to go with it. It's designed for their GoFlex enclosures but I think it works fine with a bare drive too.
I have been a Windows user my whole life. As a hacker who has recently moved to San Francisco, I've continuously battled Apple fanboys and Linux fanatics alike on why I love Windows and absolutely do not understand why people want to switch platforms.
Why? I have been using a Mac since 2007. So far, I haven't seen anything spectacular in this keynote except for the retina display. But $2199 (probably 2199 Euro in Europe) is a steep price.
Edit: Given the lack of real interesting updates in OS X since Leopard and recent iOS versions, I am actually quite interested in Windows 8 and Windows Phone after ~18 years of using Unix-like operating systems and ~5.5 years a Mac.
I thought 10.6 was so-so - I preferred Leopard's Exposé. I hate 10.7. But 10.8 makes sense again, especially now that 3rd-party apps are catching up with the concepts of 10.7.
For me, it's really Spaces whose usefulness was diminished in 10.7. They used to be configurable in multiple dimensions (i.e., X & Y): now they're linear only. Lame city.
I use change space(https://github.com/sdsykes/Change-Space) to get around this, but the fact that I can't have native 2-d spaces really bothers me. Change Space is good, but it does have a few bugs that wouldn't exist if Apple hadn't insisted on breaking spaces for no reason that I'm aware of.
I love my Macbook but can't stand the direction of the operating system. It feels like I use more and more hacks like the above just to have a usable machine.
I used this to the very end :) A friend who first started using OS X with 10.6 saw it and installed it right then too.
Good news! There is a system preference in 10.8 to ungroup windows (by application) in Mission Control.
Still, the "spaces bar" and dock show up every time you use MC, so there's less real estate than on 10.5. Dragging to the Dock stopped being useful in 10.6 IMHO, that's still the same in 10.8. (In 10.5, dragging an icon to the dock in Exposé would act the same as clicking the icon - e.g. for Skype it would open the window if it was closed.)
iTunes must be the worst offender. I always fullscreen it, because I seldom access it but want it to use all of my 13".
Then I start a video podcast. It runs inside the iTunes chrome. I hit cmd+F, it opens a new space. I finish watching the cast. The space closes and I land on the desktop instead of back in iTunes. What?
I wish any high-level blogger would start caring about OS X usability again. 10.7 needs more and not less public shaming. I don't think anyone even noticed that mouse/trackpad click-through is different again in 10.7, and for the worse IMHO. :(
As much as I love this new Macbook Pro with this beautiful retina display, Mountain Lion is just another iteration in the iOS direction and I still don't like the user experience. As usual, I will use several tools to get back to the old but good desktop metaphor with less shiny but functional features.
I tried pretty hard to find that, since I'd been able to do that for a previous version, but I came up empty. If you're telling me I could have avoided giving up SL, I'm pretty sad about that.
I tried as well. There does not appear to be a download link available anywhere for free. Everybody keeps saying you can download it, but I don't think anybody actually has in quite some time, and nobody has posted a link.
Could you be specific about what swayed you? I'm not sure what is so new, announced today, that you couldn't have bought yesterday: Retina? Will you continue to run Windows?
It's an Air-like laptop with real performance. It has a real graphics card, can support 16 GB of ram and has a rockin Ivy Bridge processor. The retina display is very impressive as well.
It is in fact marginally lighter than the 13" MacBook Pro, but the difference from the 15" model is less than on the 13" Air. The 13" MacBook Pro is 1.35 kg, and the 13" Macbook Pro is 2.05 kg (53% heavier than the Air). The MacBook Pro with Retina Display (mid-2012) is 2.02 kg while the 15" MacBook Pro is 2.56 kg (27% heavier).
Its the fragility of the retina display that has me has hesitating. I'm still using an iPad 1; I decided not to upgrade after reading that the retina screen on the iPad 3 cracks on drops that have yet to put a dent in my 1st-gen. If my gf gets the new MBP, the warranty will be absolutely necessary (she drops her laptop constantly, SSD's were a godsend for her).
Such announcements provide opportunity for a pivot point. It isn't so much the announcement itself as that the announcement provides a claimed justification for changing positions.
I bought my first Apple product ever a few months back (an iPad 3rd generation). Then I added an Apple TV (ridiculously good value).
I still use Android for my smartphone (and have no plans on changing that anytime soon, considering iOS a serious downgrade on the smartphone side), however I have to confess that this release provides me such a pivot point for my desktop/laptop use. I'd long considered getting a Mac but could never justify it. Microsoft is so rudderless and ill-directed now, and Apple is so large and in charge, this product such a technical powerhouse, that I will likely grab a new MBP "Air".
> Microsoft is so rudderless and ill-directed now, and Apple is so large and in charge
Uhh, are you joking? In the past few years, Microsoft has shown the most direction in 2 decades. Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox are all converging on the Metro UI (which is a true breath of fresh air), and Microsoft has finally stopped allowing big business to hold back innovation on Windows. Windows 8 dumps the Start Menu, and on ARM, you won't even be able to install any traditional "Windows" software - everything will have to be in Metro.
Windows 8 tablets are going to be usable for actual productivity, rather than the consumption-focused nature of the iPad. Tablets that can convert into laptops and vice versa are going to become popular in the corporate world in a way that iPads never will, due to their lack of native support for Office.
OTOH, there are a lot of people that have grown tired of iOS. It's been out for 5 years now, and little true innovation has taken place since the release of the original iPhone. Upgrades to the iPhone have mostly consisted of adding features that should have been present all along, such as a proper notifications system (which still has problems) and support for 3rd party apps (which should have been present from the beginning). You still can't have widgets on the home screen, and the chance of Apple adding some kind of split-screen view, like you can get in Metro, is extremely slim.
As for OS X, it's an absolute nightmare. The window manager is horrific, and things are only going to get worse as Apple starts restricting the installation of software from non-approved sources, all in the name of a more "beautiful" experience.
I have no interest in such a discussion in this thread, but no, clearly I'm not joking and that rhetorical intro has no place on HN.
Microsoft is a disaster currently, their navigation being "react to where Apple was two years ago". It is telling that every Microsoft defense extrapolates some fantastic future of what will be in the world of Microsoft, never using what actually is. But yes, I'm sure your imagination of a Windows 8 tablet is vastly superior to an actual real-world iPad.
The problem is perspective. The types of people that spend time on HN don't spend time in the real world, where the current state of affairs is very different from what we think it is. Apple gets a lot of hype, and no doubt the iPhone is very successful (because it was a new type of product), but the iPad is no more than than a glorified toy. Once Windows 8 tablets are released and become commonplace, the iPad will stand no chance. The ability to use the same device for casual consumption and for productivity cannot be understated. Try getting out of San Fran for a few days, and you'll start to understand what I'm talking about. There was a similar issue with Android a few years ago, but it seems even the most hardcore iOS fanboys (such as Marco Arment) have finally gotten on the Android train.
And don't forget about the TV. The iTV simply will not sell, because people are not going to throw out their existing TVs just so they can get the latest shiny toy from Cupertino. OTOH, MS has huge market- and mind-share in the form of the Xbox 360 (which has been the best-selling console for more than a year). You can already watch Netflix and HBO GO on it, and Amazon Instant support has just been added. Kinect has proven extremely successful, and with Project Glass, all kinds of new mashups are going to become realizable.
> I'm sure your imagination of a Windows 8 tablet is vastly superior to an actual real-world iPad.
Have you been living under a rock? Windows 8 is coming out this October. Several consumer previews have already been released, and hardware has been demoed. Windows 8 tablets are much more of a real entity than you seem to think.
> And don't forget about the TV. The iTV simply will not sell, because people are not going to throw out their existing TVs just so they can get the latest shiny toy from Cupertino.
There isn't any value to be had in arguing that Apple has designed a terrible product that has no reason to exist when it does not, in fact, exist. When and if Apple releases a TV product other than the current Apple TV, I'm sure it will be fascinating to see what form it takes and whether or not it manages to capture any meaningful marketshare. Until then, you're needlessly attacking a strawman based purely on rumors and hearsay.
So what you're saying is that the 350m iOS devices sold and the 400m credit card holding accounts Apple has and the record breaking revenues - that's all going to go by the wayside when Microsoft release a version of Windows Phone OS where you can alt-tab into a legacy mode version of Windows 7? Perspective indeed.
If you think this is the case, you really don't get it. You may as well be living under a rock.
Windows 8 is going to go over like a fart at the opera. It's Vista all over again. They're pissing off developers and consumers at the same time. They really don't know how to pick their battles.
People said that Macs were glorified toys until Windows made GUIs commonplace. I don't know what the future holds but I'm pretty convinced that it is not a hybrid OS like Windows 8.
> The types of people that spend time on HN don't spend time in the real world, where the current state of affairs is very different from what we think it is. Apple gets a lot of hype, and no doubt the iPhone is very successful (because it was a new type of product), but the iPad is no more than than a glorified toy.
This is quite the non-sequitur. Apple products are successful precisely because they appeal to people in the real world. Your comment about the iPad being a toy is a timeless refrain that has been leveled against every single Apple product since the original Macintosh. That time, they lost to Microsoft because A) the Mac was way too expensive, B) the ecosystem was too small, and only by the standardization of the PC was a viable ecosystem able to emerge and C) Adoption was driven by businesses who purchase by checklists rather than by personal appeal. These same downsides no longer exist, and the iPad launch is one of the most successful new products in the history of the world.
Probably most on HN are hoping for MS to hit a home run with Windows 8 if for no other reason than to foster competition and innovation. But the other thing you have to realize is that Microsoft's "no compromises" approach is insanely difficult to pull off. It's much harder than what Apple has done, and the risk of creating a confusing product that does not resonate with customers is incredibly high.
If you think all of a sudden iPads are going to stop selling when windows 8 tablets come out you must have been the one living under a rock. People don't go out and buy iPads because they want tablet computers. They go out and buy iPads because they want iPads. They want the app store, they want the integration with their computers and iTunes and their phones.
Windows 8 tablets will sell, but not to the same demographic.
As for Xbox vs a TV made by apple, you'll be wrong again, mark my words. Things that come out of cupertino sell. Project Glass sounds like a response to Airplay to me.
Overall, you're trolling because you're a microsoft fan.
Not true. I use my iPad every day. My use varies from maybe 30 minutes of email to a good few hours. On my iPad I write, I organise my day, I handle notes and document recipes for things I cook. I deliberately try to keep it a personal rather than business device but I still use it for work email, calendaring and a few bits and pieces (mostly notes). I read incessantly on the iPad and it's my primary source of daily news.
> Once Windows 8 tablets are released and become commonplace, the iPad will stand no chance.
You're betting on an unestablished fractured software experience against the main market leader? I can understand Windows 8 standing a chance against Blackberry, against WebOS and maybe against pre-ICS Android but it will take a long time for Windows 8 to catch up with Android if it blows Android out of the water. Once it's managed to get that far there has to be something seriously wrong with iOS for it to overtake. Also if you're planning on betting on Office to see you through, hate to be the one to burst your bubble but Office has been available for the iPad for months, and the iPad's had office-compatible document readers/writers that are good enough for simple documents for years.
> The iTV simply will not sell
You are right, but this is because the iTV does not exist for sale. Apple haven't announced it. There is no iTV product.
> Have you been living under a rock?
There really is no need for this type of thing on HN.
> Windows 8 is coming out this October. Several consumer previews have already been released, and hardware has been demoed. Windows 8 tablets are much more of a real entity than you seem to think.
Can I buy a Windows 8 table now? No. Can I evaluate a consumer preview version of Windows 8 on an iPad? Yes. So in a way you're right, but given that the only real entities are the wrong devices running a prototype it's not fair to compare. However, having used the consumer preview in Parallels I have to say I'm not looking forward to metro on the desktop, but on the tablet it might work well.
What's even more worrying for Microsoft is that the iPad costs at least twice as much and was never sold at a loss.
If I was working on the development team for the next generation Xbox I would be wearing diapers to work.
When you take out the expensive high-DPI touch-screen and the expensive battery, you're basically left with an AppleTV. Those sell for about third of the price of the current generation of the Xbox. If the next generation AppleTV had a nice Bluetooth controller and installable apps, it's very bad news for both Microsoft and Sony.
Over the past 10 or so years Microsoft has been a behemoth moving glacially on whatever inertia it had left. Recently, it seems like the behemoth is starting to regain control of itself and is demonstrating independent movement.
Sure; they're nowhere near being as focused purposeful as Apple is, but you can no longer say they are truly stuck in their ways. Whether that will translate into something tangible is another question, but it's hard to deny that something fundamental isn't changing at Microsoft.
Heck, I can't even honestly diss people's Windows mobile phones anymore, and that's nothing to sneeze at.
Over the past 10 or so years Microsoft has been a behemoth moving glacially on whatever inertia it had left
They completely overhauled Office. They've built wholesale online experiences, cloud services, and have purchased and entered new markets. They took the gaming market and owned it. They continued to make incredible progress with their development tools and runtimes/platforms.
The only difference this time is that they're risking it all because they're so afraid of Apple. They are essentially betting both their gaming and desktop experiences to desperately try to claw back in the smartphone industries. It is an incredible gambit that I think will prove to be a profound failure, but I think it's incorrect to see that as progress, any more than a salaryman betting it all on Red.
> They completely overhauled Office
Overhauling the Office UI is pretty much inertia; they seem to keep fiddling with it and honestly I think I'd prefer that they just left it alone.
>They took the gaming market and owned it.
Xbox360 is a distant second to Wii and only a nose ahead of PS3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars#Worldwide_sales_fi...). While it's certainly done better than its predecessor, I think describing it as "owning" is a bit of an exaggeration.
Honestly, it's a culmination of things. Up until this point, a friend of mine have been comparing the top-of-the-line ultrabook offerings to the Mac lineups. I thought the Zenbooks looked really sexy and had the performance and construction that I wanted. The new Zenbook Prime announcement has had me salivating; 1080p IPS displays, new Ivy Bridge processors, etc.
After this announcement, though; the Retina display, awesome graphics, HDMI port (Macbook dongles turned me off for a while), 700MBPS read on the hard drive (I'll have to confirm this -- that just sounds too sexy) -- Even the 0.70 inch thickness (I've never really cared about thickness before, but holy hell that's really thin). There are probably some things I've misinterpreted from these announcements, but so far, this laptop far outweighs what I thought was possible through existing PC laptop vendors.
I'm probably missing something: why have a HDMI port if you have two Thunderbolt ports? In fact, why not just have three Thunderbolt ports - even if one is only going to carry DP and not PCI?
Why would you need three Thunderbolt ports? The devices chain pretty well, if you have an external monitor for example it will also have a Thunderbolt port that other devices can be plugged into. Not needing another adapter to use HDMI is great. You already need one for Ethernet and FireWire.
I don't know: can I use a thunderbolt port to chain monitors?
About the dongles: in my use I usually take the laptop to the same places all the time, so I just buy the right cable (here it would be a thunderbolt -> hdmi cable i guess). If I go to random places where I need to hook up to a monitor I won't know whether they'll have a hdmi cable just as much as I don't know if they'll have a thunderbolt cable, so I need to carry a cable anyways. What's the difference whether it's a hdmi-hdmi or thunderbolt-hdmi cable? They're likely to have DVI or DP anyway, so you still need to take the dongles with you.
Oh alrighty then. If that includes high res 5-megapixel screens being chainable, then I'm all for a hdmi port on the other side. Flexibility's where it's at.
> why have a HDMI port if you have two Thunderbolt ports?
> [...]
> In fact, why not just have three Thunderbolt ports
Avoids needing a dongle when plugging into an HDTV or an HDMI overhead projector, I'm guessing. They probably considered the pros and cons and ended up thinking two TB ports were enough and HDMI was requested often enough it would make sense, especially as they'd axed both GigE and FW800.
And one of the TB port will often be used for e.g. a GigE adapter.
I just noticed that it doesn't have a GigE port. that is just switching an hdmi adapter for a GigE - thunderbolt cable. it was probably necessary to get the form factor, but it is annoying.
I find ethernet ports on laptops to be the most annoying port ever, since the ethernet plug is not robust at all. They break very quickly and you're left with an intermittent connection. If I use a laptop that I move a lot, I'll either use a docking station for the ethernet (thinkpad docking stations aren't so bad) or use usb (because the plug is so resilient). Now with being able to use thunderbolt I have another option that won't break so easily.
Because people hate dongles. Especially when they're $30-$50 from apple. Might as well have native HDMI since a majority of consumer electronic still have them, and just about nothing has Thunderbolt yet.
And again. People HATE buying, carying, and remembering dongles.
But won't you get more real-life real-estate out of the 1080p display? I thought that for normal apps and the web etc. the retina display was pixel-doubled for an effective real-estate equivalent to 1440x900? I get that it's better for photography and video, and if those are your primary workflows I would understand. For me, I'm trying to figure out why 1440x900 equivalent is so awesome that it would prompt all the other headaches of switching platforms.
I haven't used a Mac with a retina display yet, but I have noticed that when I went from an iPhone 3GS (non-retina) to a 4 (retina), suddenly tons of websites that I previously had to zoom to read were easily readable as-is — lots of text that had been literally illegible at "100%" was now pretty readable and text that was bigger but still small enough to be fuzzy was now crystal clear.
I don't know how much that will translate over to a computer, but it wouldn't surprise me if people who work with text a lot (including programmers) are able to comfortably use significantly smaller font sizes than they ever were able to before.
Yes, I am aware of hardware developments. I was curious what is now suddenly of interest to the parent - he answered in this thread to say that the MacBook is now a serious contender as a purchase item above other manufacturer's laptop offerings (I presume to run Windows, so it's a hardware choice).
Yes, the threshold seems a bit low for a switch. But in general, I think it's a worthy upgrade and an overall good machine. Higher resolution display plus thinner design is enough for me to be convinced, but then I'm upgrading from a late-2008 MBP.
Just promise us that when you do, you won't become a rabid fanboy yourself.
By all rights I should be the biggest fanboy ever. All my computers are Macs. I have an Apple TV. I stood in line to buy the first iPhone on launch day and have owned nothing but iPhones since. I have an iPad. I insist on using Apple services like iTunes so everything "just works" with all my Apple devices. I even converted my whole family from PCs to Macs and, yes, my "family tech support" calls have dropped.
But I'm not what you would call a "fanboy".
If someone asks why I like Apple products, I try to give rational reasons but I admit from the start that I'm biased and just "like them", plus I "think they're cool". I never sneer at PC users or people with Android phones. I don't make lame jokes about "Winblows" and such.
I guess my point is it's possible to become a total convert and still not annoy the heck out of everyone around you. I'm not saying you don't know that, just that you should monitor yourself. Once you become loyal to a brand (Apple, BMW, B&W loudspeakers, whatever) it's sometimes difficult to tell the difference between being a proud evangelist and an annoying cultist.
Luckily, I had some friends who helped me whenever I veered too far in the latter direction. :)
IMHO Apple fanboyism is not a problem in the hacker community.
It's a well-built solid metal portable development workstation. With BSD UNIX. And a pretty layer on top.
Among programmers, I never need to explain why we would buy these things.
It's outside the programming groups that the conversation gets hostile. I find most programmers avoid this completely, knowing that they're simply using the best tool available for the job, and ignoring the hype, criticism, and fanboyism. Props, hackers, keep it up.
I study computer science and the amount of banter I get from fellow students for using a macbook air is unbelievable. Other people usually seem quite ok with it, although self proclaimed power users usually seem to have an opinion about it.
This is just rich to me. Yes, enjoy your Visual Studio and broken command line, I'll be using lightweight tools and an actual POSIX command line.
*edit: Wow, -10? Sorry, I was just sharing my experience of being mocked by people who proudly brag about their Windows 7 machine and are barely proficient at .NET programming who give me a hard time because "Macs are lame and Windows is for geeks".
Didn't know there were so many fucking yuppie Windows people to be so defensive. Jesus. Literally, 10 people downvoted this. Stay classy. (And the GP backed up what I said anyway, jerks)
Just because they don't use OS X doesn't mean they use Windows. As a Computer Science student I'm willing to bet that most of those that "banter" on the parent use Linux.
Microsoft has a very strong technology evangelizing program targeted at upper education. They almost pay colleges to offer Windows-centric courses and Windows-only labs.
<tongue-in-cheek>
The Linux users generally consider OSX a nice Linux-like OS that lacks a decent package manager ;-)
Much like Microsoft, the hardware is great.
</tongue-in-cheek>
Disclaimer: I am mostly a Linux user who also uses Macs for certain tasks.
When I'm on a Mac, I'm a ports guy. MacPorts is probably the first thing I install on every Mac I lay my hands upon. That, iTerm2 and Cathode (who can resist that?)
> And microsoft is actually really generous towards students, I can get basically any software except for office for free.
The first one is always free. They will only bill you when you actually need what they offer. Chances are, when you do, you won't be able to easily move away.
I actually argued against the Windowsification of all of the classes in my college and pushed back at every opportunity. I don't think it makes sense for a college that is teaching computer science to dedicate all of their resources and tools on Windows only software. C++ is used outside of Microsoft Visual Studio, and the code that works in VS will most likely not even compile due to not being standards compliant (Although VS2010 has gotten MUCH better at it than older versions).
Many of my teachers eventually would relent and realise that yes I was right. TCP/IP is one of the classes I took in which Windows was required. TCP/IP is a network protocol, it is available in all major OS's. I turned in entire assignments with a simple note "Windows required, don't have Windows." Luckily I didn't end up getting docked points because they realised I already knew all of the information in the course.
One thing that was really nice, and I am surprised none of the teachers used it against me was the fact that with MSDNAA I as a student had access to thousands of dollars worth of Microsoft software. You name it I could download a free legal copy of it for use during my tenure at college as a student. Microsoft seems to have that on lock. What better way to get students to play with your platform than to have them use all your tools and software free of charge. Windows 7, Visual Studio, SQL, SharePoint, Exchange and others.
I agree that Visual Studio is an excellent IDE if you are targeting Windows and that SQL Server is a very good RDBMS, but why would anyone, except for some disgustingly wicked form of auto-flagellation, actually want Exchange and SharePoint?
Uuhm... Not to be overly flippant but me, my wife and my two daughters as well as my bootstrapped startup are supported by my work for a multinational financial organization. The technologies you mention essentially run this organization from an information delivery aspect.
I understand and I'm sorry if I came across as insensitive - I was half-joking. My own experience with these technologies is not favorable. Every year or so the company I work for experiences a day long mail outage. My wife has lost about a month of work because Sharepoint died and no backup could bring it back to life. And yes, both installs are maintained by people with plenty MC* certifications and, in both cases, the reasons for using the software were not tech-driven.
It does not follow that since no workable backup strategy was in place that Sharepoint is rubbish.
Look: I'm not singing the praises of these softwares, it's big clunky enterprise stuff and it is boooring... None the less: it's running some pretty important processes that combined run a large portion of the worlds I.T.
Also Microcontroller nerds (at least at my school) swore by Windows. VS integration with Atmel's dev kit is reliable and eliminates some of the elbow grease needed to work with those things (and I have had some nightmares working with them).
Really? That's actually quite surprising to me. I'd say at this point in my undergrad the majority of people in my class use Linux, followed by OS X, followed by Windows (as their development machine, I'm confident that a good number of those Linux users also have Windows installed).
I was talking about specific cases that happened to me, in support of precisely what the GP was describing. I use all major OSes and spend most of my day in Windows. I don't know why or how my comment was perceived the way it was. Clearly I'm wasting my time trying to explain myself.
Remember how you were surprised I was accusing you of being a troll a while back? And you were adamant that you aren't, and that I had you all wrong? (Amusing, given your bio.)
Now step back and read this comment, as well as your PowerShell response below, then rethink why I'd say that.
Don't you have anything better to do? Did the votes last time not teach you anything? I was offering an anecdote, I'm in a Windows environment more hours a day than OS X or Linux combined.
You're like a badly broken record no matter what it is you're spouting. Seriously where do you get off following me around talking about the same things over and over just to be an obnoxious ass? Just leave me alone, you're creepy and obviously have some misplaced superiority complex, well maybe inferiority given how much you seem to stalk and put me down.
I don't believe in down-voting without an explanation. Here's mine:
These Mac vx. PC arguments now beyond ridiculous. To those of us for whom computers are tools and not just a way to get on Facebook the metric should not be emotion or fan-boy-ism but rather applicability, efficiency, utility, cost and other factors.
I have a roughly equal number of PC's and Macs. I use both. I enjoy both. I get angry at both. There are good things with both OS's and there are thorn-in-my-ass problems with both. Welcome to having choices. As tools they are both fantastic. I love having unix behind the scenes with MacOS. Brilliant decision on their part. On the PC side, I have come to appreciate the non-nonsense cost-effectiveness of the platform. I have very powerful workstations setup for FEA fluid and heat simulation that cost a fraction of what our nicely-equipped Mac Pro's cost. And they rock.
I could say more but have to get back to work. There you go, a downvote with an explanation.
I use Windows on a very, very, very regular basis. My comment has been taken completely out of context. Were we not talking about people who had Macs being mocked for not being geeky enough? I merely offered an anecdote about my peers that ironically tout that line because it's funny.
Ironic that I'm now at -15 for pointing out that in my situation, the opposite was true.
Seriously, which part of my comment has every Windows fan out there thinking I hate Windows? I don't know how that was the takeaway when I was merely remarking on the times where I, like the grandparent, was trolled by Windows users.
It wasn't the content of your comment, it was the tone. If you sound like a prick, people will downvote you regardless of whether you have a clear point. (Which, incidentally, you didn't.)
If you look at Silicon Valley startups, it's basically almost all Macs, with the possible exception of Windows + Excel for CFOs at the larger companies, and Windows + CAD for people doing hardware design at a serious level. i.e. conference tables have MagSafe power adapters zip tied to them semi-permanently, since that's what almost everyone uses.
> i.e. conference tables have MagSafe power adapters zip tied to them semi-permanently, since that's what almost everyone uses.
It's too bad that Apple is moving to MagSafe II with the new retina MacBook Pro. I guess we'll all have to carry around adapters now: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD504
Dear god why? I am actually quite unimpressed by the entire WWDC lineup, but they made so many stupid mistakes like this. There is almost no advantage to using a slightly slimmer MagSafe, and moderate cost; there would be greater advantage to a smaller iPod Dock connector, but much higher cost, so I guess they'll do that too.
It's not thinner than the MBA 2011. The MBA 2011 has regular MagSafe. Maybe they needed to go thinner for engineering reasons to put other stuff inside, but that seems lame.
With the MBA 2011 the connector sits very low such that simply putting the laptop down on a couch will disconnect the connector in my experience. It's the #1 issue I've had while trying to use an MBA.
If using a thinner connector let Apple fix that problem, that would be quite nice. Of course it's possible that it didn't. I haven't had a chance to try the new thing.
I noticed that, too -- adding a snap-on case to the Air solves that, at the expense of making it slightly thicker. However, I strongly prefer the texture/grippiness of the case, and it protects the laptop from a lot of damage (I still use a sleevecase, but I've had the laptop fall ~3m, cracking the plastic case, and otherwise fine). The cases have little feet on them, too, which raises it up to protect the connectors.
That was exactly my response, as well, as I have something like 7 85W magsafe adapters scattered throughout my house and bags.
Then I saw the backward-compatibility adapter[1]. It's not so bad. You can probably just leave it on the computer (or cable) 24/7 and never notice it. It's _tiny_, and only $10. Whenever I end up with a device that uses it, I will probably just buy 10 of them and leave 2 or 3 in every bag I own.
Still debating if I want to drop $4k just for retina, as my current machine is the quad-3.4 iMac with 32GB. I will probably wait for a retina Air or retina TB Display.
Now, if they'd made it a clunky dongle, or charged more than $15, I would be sharpening my pitchfork. Connector conspiracy or no, I get the impression that this was a situation where this was the only possible way to get the new case just right.
It's not like they'd do this just to fuck with us - the thing has asymmetric _fan blades_, for fuck's sake.
CS students are among some of the most hostile, sophomoric people you will ever encounter in software development. They all have something to prove, even though they've barely started themselves, so putdowns are common.
If things keep going the way they're going, Apple fanboyism will become less and less of a problem among hackers. Apple appears to be in a gradual transition process from MacOS computers to iOS "Don't worry, just watch the pretty pictures, and we'll tell you which PAY button to press" devices. Windows, not wanting to be left behind selling computers instead of devices (Yuck! Computers! That's SO 20th century), is making the same transition to Metro.
It appears that both of the major computer platform makers have come to the same conclusion: they don't want to make computers that their customers can program for their own purposes; they want to make ever-more-tightly-sealed point-of-sale devices for buying digital products and services from the device maker and its partners.
In other words, if you think the sealed iPhone, tethered to giant companies with strict rules about what you may and may not do with it or put on it and its design esthetic of "enjoy the beauty, stop resisting, do exactly as we say, and why not buy something with it, you'll feel better" is your idea of a great "pocket computer" for hackers, then you should be happy about where our computers are going. Otherwise....
I think we hackers are going to be driven to Linux on the desktop over time, which I would have no objection to if only there were an "Apple for Linux" company making the hardware and matching drivers of Apple-level quality. I can live without MacOS, but the hardware is a big deal.
From the sales charts, it seems this is what the customers want, too. For some reason folks like to believe that Apple is somehow "fooling" customers into buying that experience. What if it's simply what non-developers want? Isn't that a simpler explanation?
The objection is that this isn't mutually exclusive. You can provide all the niceties, and make it so that there are still ways in to the simplified UI so that a nine-year-old can set out on their own and learn things about how the machine works. The companies are using this paradigm shift as an excuse to lock us in a box, they are not locking us in a box because the tech or the experience is only available if they do so.
They're eating the seed corn, but they don't really care since they won't feel the effect for 15 years or more. I personally don't care much either, unless they manage to fully legislate their locked boxes as the only option... which they are trying to do whenever we aren't looking, by the way, the most recent being with Microsoft locking out other OSes on their ARM boxes.
Yes, you can do both, but if consumers aren't demanding you do so, why do it? Ultimately it costs more to deliver that experience, so from a business perspective it doesn't make sense to do it if you're not losing a material number of product sales without it.
The companies are using this paradigm shift as an excuse to lock us in a box, they are not locking us in a box because the tech or the experience is only available if they do so.
Yes. It's clear that Apple considers the relative openness of Macs a defect which they're only keeping around for backwards compatibility.
unless they manage to fully legislate their locked boxes as the only option... which they are trying to do whenever we aren't looking
Or even when we are. Apple has been quite open about their desire to destroy Android with IP lawsuits, which would leave no significant mobile platform where you can legally run software of your choice. And I won't be at all surprised if the next version of OS X removes root access and the ability to run unsigned apps. (Neither of which you actually need in order to develop software for the app store; your test apps can be signed with a machine-specific key).
That said, I'm still getting the retina MBP as an upgrade from my 2006 model. AFAIK it still supports booting Linux if OS X becomes too user-hostile. It would be nice if every other PC manufacturer hadn't spent the last 5 years making their laptop displays worse, but oh well.
>It's clear that Apple considers the relative openness of Macs a defect which they're only keeping around for backwards compatibility.
This is not remotely clear. Do you really think Apple wants the App store to dry up because they are the only people left who can develop for it? The Apps make the app store and they know this.
False dilemma; that is not the other alternative. The other alternative is that only a certain set of people bother to purchase the license to create apps, mostly for professional reasons, and plenty of apps are still created. But not by curious teenagers who want to learn about how things work.
Linux + webapps will be the only way to combat the locked-down, run-only-what-we-allow-and-give-us-30% mentality eventually. iOS has proven that regular customers can have their computing freedom trampled on as long as you give them pretty buttons to press while it's happening. Insert other assorted not-far-off-doomsday-conspiracies-here.
The move toward integrated, worry-free, easy to use products for consumers is a good thing.
In order to keep such things being developed, Apple will need to provide an adequate development environment.
Thus, Apple has an incentive to keep both worlds alive.
The only thing to worry about is that, because they only have the incentive to keep their development ecosystem merely adequate, we won't see much improvement in developer tools – just slow, linear change. Fortunately Xcode has competition from Visual Studio to keep it going, but whether they will continue offering a competitive BSD development environment is a legitimate question. Most Linux distributions already provide a better experience in this respect, having package managers and user communities and such.
Ultimately, I find the attitude you present here to be a bit overreactive. Lion and Mountain Lion introduce a number of iOS-like features and integration, but as far as I know, the developer tools were not crippled in any way, only improved, a bit.
Apple decoupled the compiler/command line tools from Xcode specifically so that projects like MacPorts and HomeBrew can continue to exist on the Apple platform. There was a post on this a while back on HN!
I absolutely love HomeBrew, it is modeled a lot after MacPorts/FreeBSD ports tree and provides a way to compile packages from source (some are even hosted as bottles... no compiling required). It is an excellent tool to download and install libraries and do development with. Will Apple keep all those tools around? Only time will tell, but so far it is looking good and I don't think it is in their best interest to move away from it.
I'm actually a designer and musician. Apple's recent media production tools are excellent. Logic, FCP, iMovie, Keynote, Quartz Composer, etc. are best in class. The move toward iOS influenced software is a net win IMO. Fewer details to worry about, more fluid interfaces, and command line utilities from the Linux community aren't going anywhere.
I used Aperture and Keynote a lot, and I liked them. But Aperture has gone down the drain - there were lots of regressions of Raw support for various camera's (search the discussions forum for plenty of examples). Also, it has become slow, the interface regularly freezes, and feature-wise the gap with Lightroom widened (e.g. denoising in Lightroom is far and far better). Since Apple didn't seem to care, I switched to Lightroom.
Keynote was and is a great presentation application. But PowerPoint 2008 surpassed it, PowerPoint 2011 even more. The only major feature missing from Powerpoint is magic move. Other than that, PowerPoint has better table and chart tools, better graphics, and at the very least adjusts font sizes automatically when necessary.
I actually think that besides performance issues on older macbooks, Xcode has developed quite nicely in the recent updates. At least for obj-C it's a pretty productive and powerful environment. I definitely prefer it over VS2008 and lower, haven't yet had the chance to work with the newer VS versions though. I like eclipse too, however the panel management in XCode is so much easier - I don't see anymore why you would need a fully controllable widget-docking space that you have to micromanage until everything works the way you want it.
I think you're underestimating how much of an obstacle a traditional filesystem is to most people. The cloud integration and appification that seems so restricting to you is sweet, sweet relief for a great deal of people.
By catering to them, Apple doesn't take anything away from you; though they do eventually entrap you as well with all that shiny and convenience, which I can understand being resentful about. It's a bit disempowering when a company thinks it knows what's good for you better than you do, and ends up being kinda right about it.
I completely agree with you that making the computing experience simpler, more like poking buttons on a high-end blender, is what most consumers need. Satisfying what most consumers need is most likely what the companies need. The companies have as much right to want what's best for themselves as I do. They're not doing anything wrong, IMO.
That does not automatically make their design decisions a reflection of their superior knowledge of what's good for me, even "kinda".
Linux-like customization on top of Apple-quality hardware/driver foundations in form factors like the iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro, and MacPro, would be what would be good for me, but I'm not saying anybody owes it to me.
I am thinking, though, that as the two major personal computer platforms become more closed, it gradually opens a market for some savvy company to go in the opposite direction: targeting those who want more customization, not less, without sacrificing hardware quality.
If that ever does happen, that will be what's good for me.
Even customization is becoming easier. Consider the ease of jail breaking iOS vs rooting an Android device along wth the push button tweakability that is Cydia and you quickly realize that even the tinkerer/customiser world is headed for liberation from complexity.
The world of code and hackers and the purity of possibility will always be there but bringing greater Technological ability to all people is an important goal, a worthy challenge and one that the major players all seem to be taking on.
This is a very, very good thing because the dream and power of technology is far too great to be bound to the world of 'power users' and the like. The are wonderfully intelligent and creative people in the world who happen to fall outside of that category and we all stand to gain from their contributions.
It's not abut what's good for you. It's about what good for us.
Certainly there are periods of time when it is possible to jailbreak a device over the internet(!!), times when it is possible locally, and times when it it, for months, not possible at all.
My point (poorly made perhaps) is that I have heard people say, "Oh, don't worry about Apple's walled garden, anyone with technical knowledge can be out of it as soon as they want, with jailbreaking". However, there are clearly long periods of time when that isn't true.
Incidentally: I found myself in exactly the same position with iPad 2. It seemed as if it was all hinging on release date of the next iteration of the OS and I did wonder at tine if Apple had perfected their game of cat and mouse.
>I am thinking, though, that as the two major personal computer platforms become more closed, it gradually opens a market for some savvy company to go in the opposite direction: targeting those who want more customization, not less, without sacrificing hardware quality.
All 10 of them? Maybe VA Linux has a market after all.
Yes, traditional filesystems have lousy usability. That's orthogonal to whether it should be a federal crime to run unapproved software on "your" hardware, which Apple believes should be the case with iOS.
Most of my audio gear doesn't work at all and graphics drivers, while much improved as of late, are still woeful.
I Hackintoshed my desktop (because we're never getting another Mac Pro) specifically because of driver support. It's actually better in Hackintosh-land than on Linux.
Also, programmers get annoyed at their machines, even nice well-made ones, for all kinds of specific reasons that most computer users won't.
Sure, I like getting a new shiny thing just like anybody else. But it does seem a little less shiny once I've tried to put my employer's dev environment on it and found that Apple's customized version of a common C library broke the build. Or an Oracle dependency we (very unfortunately) have hasn't been upgraded by Oracle in a couple years and crashes on the new OS.
The lot of the programmer seems to be that you never get to have your tools "just work".
Exactly. I'm like this. I have all Apple paraphernalia, but I only buy them because they work well and look good. If Roku produces a player that works with all routers, and not crap out on updates, have customer support that can help me, I would use theirs. But it isn't the case and I can't waste my money.
Speaking as a Windows user who uses a Mac for dev on iOS: you will be frustrated by Mac OS, at least initially. I've been using Mac OS daily for over a year and I still find Windows superior in many ways. This is my opinion, of course. Not trying to change minds or trolling.
I love my Mac (as I said in my reply to OP), but I agree that Mac OS takes some getting used to. Luckily I had some Linux experience before switching so I felt right at home at the terminal. But some things still feel odd to me, even after several years.
- The unified menu bar makes sense and saves space, but it's still somewhat disconcerting to someone who is used to their menus having some spatial context with what they are controlling.
- I've always hated the "three gumballs". I much prefer Windows' minimize, maximize, and quit windows controls. Again, the "maximum useful size" feature makes sense, but it's almost never what I want. I really miss Aero snap. There are some programs that will help you out for this stuff. I'm pretty partial to Moom myself. UPDATE: Moom JUST got updated with a "snap to corners" feature. I like it!
- The Finder is still pretty brain-dead. Windows explorer is much better for a power-user.
- And then there's XCode. Oh how I miss Visual Studio. Yes, XCode is getting nicer by the year, but I also do Windows development on my Parallels VM so I'm constantly reminded of how much nicer it is to code C# in Visual Studio than Objective-C in XCode (and I don't even mind Objective-C as a language).
> The Finder is still pretty brain-dead. Windows explorer
> is much better for a power-user
I thought that power-users used PathFinder? (Though I don't know if that's even still in active development. Last time I seriously used OSX was 10.3 ~ 10.4).
It always shocks me tha Finder doesn't have cmd-X cut... cutting is by far the most frequent operation I do in other non-dual-pane file managers. But what do you like better about windows explorer? Finder's "view as columns" makes it feel a little bit more powerful to me.
I've been using Forklift for a while now instead of Finder. Much less braindead, reminds me of Directory Opus on the Amiga. Probably need to spend more time customising it so it's as good as Midnight Commander but it's getting there.
Its funny I had the same issue but can say after 5 years on a Mac it goes away. That and I sometimes have to work on a Windows 7 machine for certain SDK's and now I'm lost over there. Mostly I miss the large multi-touch track pad (I have to use a mouse on the windows laptop) and Expose, which I seem to use a lot.
The new Windows 8 Metro UI will create an ever bigger gap between the two it seems.
All that being said, w/r/t an OS it seems like the one you're most comfortable on is the one you should use. Its really hard to say any one that is objectively better at this point.
Have you considered using Parallels or VMware Fusion? Both are good options. I use Parallels daily for all my Windows development.
It took some time to relearn my windows modifier keys (CMD = Windows Key; ALT is where the Windows key normally is), but after that expense I run Mac and Windows app in the same session, and more importantly, without switching hardware.
What do you mean, "No ctrl-C?" As in no keyboard shortcut to copy? That's "command-c", just like pasting is "command-v" and cutting is "command-x". And if you mean ctrl-c, to kill tasks on the command line, that works just fine. And delightfully doesn't create confusion when you wanted to copy something out of the terminal instead of killing the program that was running.
Yes, "Command-X" handles that case. Pretty much every editing shortcut from Windows converts over by using command in place of ctrl. Though I couldn't state that that's always been true, it has been as long as I have used Macs (late '06).
Yes, there is a cut/copy/paste (CMD+X, CMD+C, CMD+V).
There was a time (don't recall which iterations) in which the MAC OS finder didn't support those three for _files_ - but I think they've always worked for images/text/etc...
This has been added in 10.7 (albeit by a slightly different means):
"Command-C" then "Command-Option-V" will remove the originating file.
I actually like it better; you get to decide how to treat the files when the operation is actually executed, not when you initiate it. This negates the need to go back and remove the files when you realize you meant to Ctrl-X instead of Ctrl-C.
As someone using the 2011 Macbook (bought about a month ago) I have to say some things really annoy me in OSX, some things less so. I'm slowly getting used to the Mac way of doing things, but still occasionally cmd-L to lock my screen only to find I have to go to a hot corner instead.
You can use Ctrl + Shift + Eject to lock your screen, also if you open up Keychain Access, then in options (Apple + ,) select "Show keychain status in menu bar", now you have a lock that shows up next to the rest of the menu bar icons, clicking on it provides an option named "Lock screen".
I've been using a Mac for a while but have yet to find a way to remap Command-Q to something else. I've accidentally exited more than my share of apps instead of closing a window. IMO those are just too close together. I would rather have a Cmd-Shift-Q or something similar.
I run Windows on my MBA for when I'm travelling. Apple make fantastic hardware; but their saccharine UIs make me retch.
One constant, though: over the past 10 years, I've moved my life further and further into the Cygwin command line, so that I'm insulated from the frippery going on at the edges; with my setup, I'm approximately as at home on Linux, Solaris, Mac and Windows. I'm not optimistic based on what I've seen of Windows 8's direction.
Out of curiosity, if you're comfortable with Linux and do a lot of work in a Cygwin environment, what are your reasons for running Windows as your MBA's main OS rather than a Linux flavor?
Within cygwin, you can run Windows executables via bash, for example. I can't speak for the parent, but it would make sense that niceties like that are part of it.
I don't know it for certain about Airs but with the Pros as i understand there's some issues with bios/hardware support in linux. I don't know how severe as I don't own any of the hardware myself.
Ask that question the other way around: if you could get all the command-line goodness you want from Linux but also have all the device support (particularly, solid graphics card drivers), apps, games etc. of Windows, isn't that better?
Linux GUIs (Android only partially excepted), in my experience, are amateur in the worst way: dilettantish, faddish, inconsistent, incomplete, and replaced with something new and differently broken long before any stability emerges. I also really dislike the UI scaling: the font selection, border sizes, etc., KDE / Gnome defaults are all too widely spaced for my taste, and customizing it so that it would be acceptable seems to be a full-time job. As it is with Windows, I had to install Classic Shell to get a usable explorer tree view and start menu I could live with.
There isn't a single graphical app available exclusively for Linux that I'm jealous of. And for command-line / server stuff that's Linux-only, I'm perfectly happy with ssh running in mintty on Windows.
What about package managers? Windows management (e.g. Xmonad)?
You don't like the KDE/Gnome defaults and don't want to spend time customizing. Fonts? Install from package manager. Themes? Install from package manager. Or download from gnome-look.org and install using gnome-tweak-tool. Yet you go out of your way to tweak Windows to your liking.
I don't have driver issues, but that's from researching purchases before buying.
Window management: I prefer cascaded windows (the bottom-left corners effectively start working like tabs - see http://blog.barrkel.com/2009/11/on-difficulty-of-setting-win...). Tiled windows are a waste of screen space; I have far more open windows than can ever fit tiled.
And what about package managers? Cygwin has a package manager; combined with cygports, it has just about everything I need, resolves dependencies just fine. I also mirror both repositories locally, where the relatively smaller sizes (18G + 19G) pay off, and I don't have to be worried about internet connectivity to install an app.
Package managers on Linux (I run Ubuntu Netbook and Debian), Solaris (I run Nexenta NCP3) have given me plenty of headaches, mostly from packages disappearing from repositories, or repository servers going away. There's been times I've just wanted to e.g. update my text editor to the latest version, and started pulling on a thread that led to needing a new kernel - that never happens with Cygwin. Stuff starts failing to install because dependencies are no longer available. It's probably because I don't update enough, which is in turn because I don't want to break something that works (none of these machines are public facing); but I can go years between Cygwin updates without issues.
Driver issues: I don't have any, and I don't have to research anything! When I need a new machine, I just buy the latest hardware (for example, currently I have an Nvidia 680GTX), download the latest driver from the vendor, and it works. Linux? Just look at this fun here: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA4O...
> Tiled windows are a waste of screen space; I have far more open windows than can ever fit tiled.
That's what multiple workspaces are for. Tiling WMs are especially great when working with large and/or multiple monitors. You're not forced to always use tile mode, you can easily switch between layouts via hotkey: http://xmonad.org/tour.html
You don't want to update for fear of breaking something, yet you admit your problems stem from never updating.
Have you thought about Debian Stable/Ubuntu LTS releases?
Are you really complaining that Debian/Ubuntu package availability? Even if the main servers disappeared, you're ignoring the fact that there's plenty of mirrors. What happens if microsoft.com disappeared?
Explorer looks less dense, doesn't have tabs, split panes, copy queuing, real file modification tracking (Explorer requires F5 to see changes). It doesn't auto-adjust column widths, look at file size as an example. Not to mention the explorer.exe process doubles as the WM, so when it crashes all windows get reset.
Nautilus has a better hotkeys. Alt + Home to jump back to home directory, F9 to see symlinks to common directories, Ctrl + H to toggle hidden files, Ctrl + 1/2/3 to change views.
You could have not chosen a worse program to compare between the two OSes.
> <driver issues>
That's a result of market dominance, not anything intrinsically different between Windows and Linux. Congrats!
Have you tried installing a clean version Windows 7 on a laptop? Have you noticed how many proprietary drivers you have to download and install? I did this a few months ago with a new X220 and spent 4 hours finding, downloading, and installing drivers. If Lenovo.com disappeared, I'd be SOL.
Take any laptop and clean install Ubuntu and Windows without internet access. You will have a better working system with Ubuntu.
Due to lack of proprietary drivers, Linux actually has much better support for older hardware. Not to mention a large source of Windows BSODs are due to low quality, 3rd party drivers running in the kernel.
I didn't want to get dragged into a to and fro, but it looks like I have little choice.
I can have multiple workspaces on Windows too, but it doesn't suit my work style. Don't care that smart people disagree with me; there isn't a person in the world with whom I agree on everything. I like to think the things I do differently make me better at some things than most people.
Updates: I don't want to break anything, that's correct. Updating for the sake of updating is an unnecessary risk; but you have it backwards. It's the experiences of broken updates that cause me not to update more often. If MS.com disappears, nothing breaks. I can still install all my stuff, without even going online. Even activation can be done on the phone.
Explorer density: that screenshot is actually from a post complaining about the lack of density in Vista's version of Explorer, you can read about it here: http://blog.barrkel.com/2008/08/venting-on-vista.html ; but I think you may be mistaken in what you think I use Explorer for. I use it almost exclusively for browsing filesystem contents, and for editing more complex Windows ACLs; I use the command-line for actual moving, copying, etc. Furthermore, Explorer file change tracking does actually work; part of my complaint in that blog post was how they changed file tracking in Vista such that it didn't wait for F5 to resort. I'm not a fan of auto-resizing of columns; it's a feature I'd turn off.
I have a way of working with Windows in conjunction with Cygwin that I've honed over 10+ years. I don't need F9 to see symlinks to common directories; common directories are symlinks in my Cygwin home directory, and in the rare occasions I want to browse them, I open them by typing "start ~/docs" or similar - but I usually don't browse them, because I mostly use Explorer for browsing unfamiliar files. My settings for Explorer is to never hide hidden files; my ls alias does. Things are set up and complement one another in just the way I like them.
Yes, market dominance; I can get the best of both worlds by using the dominant OS along with all the free tools provided by Cygwin. This is a good thing, selfishly speaking.
Offline Linux? I've tried that numerous times, particularly from 1996 through to 2002, when I gave up on Linux for a long spell and doubled down on Cygwin. The biggest pain? Needing to install an app, going into work where there was internet access, downloading a .deb or .rpm, then trying to install it - without luck, because it needs dependencies, recursively. It was a nightmare. With Windows, the apps I need are generally .zip, .exe or .msi, and include everything.
Every laptop I've ever bought, I've reinstalled the OS from scratch; I've never owned a Windows PC with an OS I didn't install myself. I wouldn't touch the drivers from Lenovo for hardware I could find anywhere else; OEM drivers are usually out of date, and often include "utilities" that you don't need, with a half-dozen icons in the notification area and another dozen services running in the background. It's the OEM setup that make me clean reinstall the OS.
First thing to do when reinstalling the OS on a system is to collect a manifest of all the hardware in it, and locate drivers before the install rather than after. I used to work as a computer hardware technician before I became a developer; I've built, upgraded and fixed hundreds of PCs, reinstalled MS OSes countless times.
Biggest source of Windows BSODs in my experience? Bad RAM :) (Probably followed by failing or corrupt HDD causing kernel paging errors. Reasonably rare to be a bad driver - in my experience; usually poor drivers are associated with cheap hardware.) Lack of drivers for older hardware has never been a problem; I generally never run hardware more than 18 months old.
> That's a result of market dominance, not anything intrinsically different between Windows and Linux. Congrats!
<rant>
Linux support for new hardware is so crappy, it's unbelievable. I couldn't even launch ubuntu GUI setup because it preloads noveau, which causes kernel panics on my video card (nvidia gtx 560 ti). You have to spend hours in google to get anything to work, and it's embarrassing and humiliating at the same time.
Although I didn't watch the keynote, I tuned in to the live tweeting CNN gave. Don't get me wrong, Apple's Macbook Pro is a nice piece of hardware, but I failed to see anything earth-shattering in their recent announcements.
At a high level, they're really just upgrading to Ivy Bridge, USB 3.0, and Retina displays across their notebook line. Nothing mind-blowing really.
We need to remember that it's the nature of technology to continuously improve. We tend to take it for granted, but that is because continuous improvement has been that reliable. 2 MP 15" displays were available in 2002 and were a $2000-laptop technology by 2006 if not earlier. It is not surprising that 5 MP 15" displays are $2000-laptop technology six years later.
Display technology has been stagnating for decades. The "retina" display (if it is as good as promised) might be the first display that matches the quality of ancient IBM flexview displays or rarities like this one:
Two decades ago (1992), where was your high-resolution LCD monitor?
The link shows a high-res flat panel monitor that was announced for production at $18,000 about a decade ago. Technology improves, price comes down. Call it about a 20% year-over-year cost reduction for the decade.
It may be more accurate to say that technology mainstream technology improves in leaps and surges, rather than "continuously". Sometimes the same technology gets cheaper, sometimes new technology replaces older technology, but next year's is almost always better and/or cheaper than last year's.
That said, I am delighted that the improvement in laptop displays is shifting back to "better" instead of just "cheaper".
there is nothing mindblowing in the fact, that the most expensive brand is the first that can afford expensive components. It begins in the premium segment, and filters down to mass market in 3 years.
I too was windows/nix only until joining a start-up in Beijing that was doing iOS work. It amazes me how quickly I adjusted to Mac OS and after only a year I find it frustrating every time I have to go back to windows. Having just moved to San Francisco myself, I find it nice suddenly being in the majority.
Edit: Oh, and as soon as I have a job, I'm getting one! I've been drooling over Ivy Bridge specs for months.
To be frank, Apple makes awesome Windows PCs. Their Windows drivers are quite good also. Still hate the placement of the control key on the keyboard though, but I am slowly becoming acclimated to it.
Remap caps lock to control, and you'll be a lot more comfortable.
Unless you use that other text editor, you know, the one that makes you always have to reach for the escape key...in that case, I suppose you should map it to escape instead.
Nonsense. Map caps lock to control regardless of whether you're an emacs or vim user. If you use vim, control+c does the same as escape and since vim does still use control sometimes, it makes sense to keep control easy to access and just use that (IMHO very easy to press) key combo instead.
Except there's a 200ms delay on the Capslock key to prevent accidental activations. Because this is built into the hardware, it means that even if you remap, if you press the second key really quickly after the first, the character ends up getting inserted into your document. It's ridiculously annoying.
OS X turns off the delay if you map that key to something else. The only workaround I've found in Linux is to force the LED on with setleds so that the hardware thinks it doesn't need to enable the delay.
Not for me - I've had two Macbooks in the last two years for work, and both of them suffered this problem, which makes developing in Vim super annoying (I remap Caps_Lock to Esc).
Apple released a firmware fix that makes the Capslock key behave normally if it's remapped in OS X. However, I don't use OS X, and the keyboard doesn't send the event until after the delay (if I just tap the key quickly, Linux/Windows don't see anything), so I assume it's some combination of keyboard firmware + OS X.
Hear, hear. Remapping capslock to control is one of the first things I do upon setting up a new OS, and I use vim. ctrl+[ is equivalent to esc, and with the Control key easily accessible from the home row I still get to use the window manipulation features (which all use control chords) in Vim without inducing carpal tunnel syndrome.
I still don't understand why people want to switch platforms. I'm using a macbook pro with windows. OSX is terrible in my opinion, and so I just use bootcamp and go on my merry way.
I've spent a reasonable amount of time using Windows, Linux, and OSX. All of them suck. All of them are also awesome, at different things.
If you want an living room PC for entertainment, Windows is king. Neither Linux or OSX support Bluray properly and Windows still has a huge edge in gaming. Windows also supports the most hardware. That's become unimportant to most people, but if you work in a research lab with various oddball computer controlled devices around, you are often forced to work with Windows simply because that's the only OS supported by drivers for a lot of things.
OSX is the perfect OS for your mother. There's the one "Apple way" of doing things, so if she needs help it's easy to give her some. OSX gets decent battery life (on mac hardware) and still has a few Unix friendly features that haven't been locked away by Apple yet. If you're looking for a ghetto linux workstation, OSX will do in a pinch. I actually spent the better part of last year working under OSX on a Mac Book air. I've used Mac's off and on for decades and this is just the most recent stint (The MBA hardware lured me in this time). It worked, but the OS still puts up too much fight you when you try to customize it. OSX has also gotten rather buggy. I'm relieved to have retired it. As I said, while it would be great for my mother I personally detest OSX. Also, Mac hardware is moving away from the DIY crowd. e.g. The MBA's actually use proprietary screws to keep you out of your own laptop's innards. If you've ever saved a laptop from a coffee spill by disconnecting the battery and opening it up and doing a little cleaning, just bear in mind you won't be able to do that with most future macs.
Linux is bug central. Don't get me wrong, it's come a long way from the days when Slackware was king. You can install Ubuntu and almost everything will just work. The devil is in the details though, and if you have a low tolerance for flakiness you'll have to tweak away. However, no other OS is as powerful and flexible. If you want it to do X, it can do X in dozens of different ways. If the journey is as important as the destination for you, Linux is your OS.
Windows is all things to all people, but entertainment first and foremost. OSX is for your mother or people who would rather not use a real computer. Linux is for those who embrace the quest. Decide (and be honest with yourself) what kind of user you are and your OS preference will become clear, although what you are forced to use may be different. I currently use both Windows and Linux extensively, and occasionally help my Mom with OSX.
Perceived hardware quality is something Apple is fantastic at. Their laptops look and feel great. They feel like they'll last decades. This is misleading since they're actually built to be disposable. e.g. If you spill coffee on your Macbook Air, it's dead. You can't fix it because you can't remove the battery in a timely fashion and don't have the tools to open it. Apple won't fix it because their warranty doesn't cover spills. They won't even open it up and help you clean it up. They'll just tell you it's now off warranty and to kindly buy another or PFO. This is the big apple lie. Their stuff feels like heirlooms, but it's built to be binned at the first sign of trouble or obsolescence (or when the non-user-replaceable battery inevitably fails).
For some strange reason Apple has managed to put retina displays in their laptops before LG or Samsung (who probably manufacture those panels) manage to put them in their own laptops. While other laptop manufacturers are pretty timid about doing new things these days, they are getting faster at following in Apple's footsteps. We'll likely see Samsung or LG putting out their own laptops with retina displays within a few months. At least some of them will have proper screws that you actually own a screwdriver for.
Samsung really has the potential to be an industry leader. They make everything. SSD's, memory, displays, you name it. Some of their efforts (e.g. the Series 9) have actually been innovative in certain small and specific ways. It's frustrating to watch them sit back and let Apple do things "first" with their own parts though. Someone at Samsung is really dropping the ball and I hope they're shown the door soon.
> Someone at Samsung is really dropping the ball and I hope they're shown the door soon
Amen brother. It's astonishing to me that so much of what Apple creates is actually made by Samsung, and yet they constantly seem so far behind.
Have you seen their new 15" Ultrabooks though? They are awesome. 15" screen and weighs more than a pound less than the new MBP (obviously, with tradeoffs)
The link is to a (supposedly) 15" model, even if the page title says 14". Specs do say 15".
Biggest tradeoff being the Samsung has a low voltage (slow) dual core vs a full speed quad core plus a massive GPU. I don't think we'll see anything much lighter than the Macbook just due to the need to vent the heat. It's considerably lighter than any other quad I know of.
Yes, they messed up the title. It is a 15" Ultrabook. I've seen it in person and it's fantastic. Obviously, it is more like a 15" MBA than a 15" MBP, but my point in posting the link is that Samsung seems to be doing some cool stuff.
Do oter manufacturers except Panasonic cover spills?
How is the machine milled MacBooks designed to fail at the first sign of trouble?
The batteries are actually designed to last for many years and pretty easy to replace with a screwdriver.
My MBP from 2008 is still going strong, and that's the less solidly built pre-unibody. Unlike many others, Apple extended the warranty because of the nVidia chipset bug.
The last time I checked, most major manufacturers except Apple (Lenovo, Dell, HP, ...) let you buy Accidental Damage Protection (which does cover spills among many, many other things).
From what I hear, Apple can sometimes be nice about accidents, but other times they're sticklers about the rules.
Here in New Zealand we have The Consumer Guarantees Act. The beauty of it is that the item is covered for as long as a reasonable person would expect (or something like that), and is suitably vague about how long this. Here is a case where a 4 year old computer was repaired at the manufacturers expense. buying extended warranties is kind of a waste here, as complaing to a government agency may well get you the same result, for free (it has worked for me). http://www.consumerblogs.org.nz/tech/2009/04/squaring-up-to-...
"For some strange reason Apple has managed to put retina displays in their laptops before LG or Samsung"
There's nothing strange about this. Apple has been pushing very high resolution as a differentiator for 2 years now. They've made huge investments in new factories for Toshiba, Sharp and likely other display makers. They've signed huge contracts taking almost all the production from other vendors. It's not like tomorrow Samsung Mobile can say "shit tear up that $3 bln deal with Apple we want to make a 2880x1800 laptop now"
"Samsung really has the potential to be an industry leader."
The fast follower strategy has been ingrained into Samsung for what, decades? I don't see how it's frustrating to watch them execute the strategy they've been very successful with and I don't expect them to turn around and bet the farm on a new market leading approach.
I think the frustration is the fact that Samsung has all the ingredients needed for success, except courage. We could certainly do with a serious Apple competitor (in the US).
However I think that fundamentally, Samsung cannot really change much. The Korean style of management, with strict adherence to hierarchy and deference to rank, may be the reason why the company can't market its own technologies (I'm completely speculating of course, but I have a strong feeling that this might be correct). Another reason may be that it is quite successful outside US. (e.g in India, Samsung == Apple in quality; that is the perception)
Agreed on the "perceived" quality. Based on my experiences, I'd bet money that if you compared a 3-year-old Thinkpad to a 3-year-old Mac, the Thinkpad would be in far better shape.
I'll have to disagree with you as I own both a 3 year old Thinkpad and a 2 year old Macbook Pro. The keyboard of my Thinkpad has been giving me problems for over a year, and I haven't had any problems with the keyboard on my Macbook.
It's funny that the people who make bets like this (that Macs are unreliable) are the ones who don't actually own them.
My Thinkpad is only a few years old, and the cooling system is acting up, I'm also having keyboard issues (even after replacing it) and just isn't worth bothering with. My old Macbook Pro on the other hand still practically runs like new, and never had to be repaired for anything.
I wish people wouldn't make claims based on speculation.
I wish people would be more specific when discussing this. "Only a few years old" and "old" can both cover a rather wide range, even if in this case "old" is capped at six years by the date of introduction of the model.
I realize this is anecdotal, but my 2009 macbook pro 13 is in great shape. Screen, battery, and keyboard are all great. I've watched the new macbook pros come out for 3 years now, and I have felt no serious desire to upgrade.
The only thing the newer macbooks would beat mine on would be games, and I just don't play very many. When I do its usually casual like Plants vs Zombies or whatever.
It's lasted longer and fared better than any other laptop I've owned (14" vostro, 13" inch vaio, 17" HP). It has simply been the best laptop I've every owned.
I have done upgrades, the best of which being an SSD. Without that, I'm sure I'd be feeling the pain of old hardware. I pulled the optical drive out and moved my mechanical drive to that bay for extra storage.
The casing has a few very minor nicks, and I did take it in to the apple store to get new rubber "feet" a few months back (under warranty).
I love my macbook pro. Someday I'll upgrade again, if the logic board gives out or something. Probably to a new macbook pro. Perhaps not though, the other manufacturers are catching up with their ultrabooks.
This laptop has been the first computer I've owned where I haven't felt like I was "fighting" with it to get work done.
The "retina" display is the first thing they've done that has me actually wanting to buy new hardware.
I've never used a Thinkpad, though, so I can't say whether it would have fared better or not.
The t60 was the last model built when IBM still owned the laptop division. Spun off, Lenovo commoditized and did not keep up the QA. In my org, t60's were widely coveted, hand updated (ssd's, memory) and kept over newer offerings.
The latest T's and X's are better, but your average 60p has a better monitor than nearly all of the current tpad line.
T60ps were built by Lenovo and some outright carried the Lenovo badge. You could claim the design has gone downhill, but the build quality is Lenovo's.
Looking at the IPS-equipped X220 for my next laptop :)
More anecdotal evidence, but I have a 5 year old Thinkpad and a 5 year old Macbook. Guess what: both are going strong. Quality isn't exclusive to one manufacturer. I really dislike these either/or strawman arguments.
My macbook pro from 2008 survived a motorcycle accident and became accidental back armor. Still worked up until a few months ago until the mainboard went kaputt.
I'll rate that as damn good. Only damage was cosmetic other than that it was in great shape. I think you may be rating the macbook pro too low. I've seen people drop their thinkpad and having them go boom.
Yes yes anecdotal evidence blah blah. But I place a lot of props to that macbook pro surviving a motorcycle accident. Its been retired along with the helmet that saved me. Just my $0.02
In early March I was in Santa Clara for this year's PyCon. I took with me a white early 2006 Macbook which needed replacement for the bottom shell (it cracked and a piece fell off). Repair was to cost US$ 120, which I gladly approved. Since there was a recall replacement to be done, the replacement of the bottom case came at no cost. During the replacement, they damaged the cable connector for the keyboard, which was also replaced without cost.
In the end, I took a 6 year old computer to an Apple store and walked out with it looking more or less new, for free.
Apple's service is nothing short of amazing. I doubt IBM would have done that to your Thinkpad.
when the non-user-replaceable battery inevitably fails
Battery replacement is $99.
For some strange reason Apple has managed to put retina displays in their laptops before LG or Samsung (who probably manufacture those panels) manage to put them in their own laptops.
Windows probably doesn't support retina properly (which is sad, considering that MS has been working on retina support since Vista). Also, Apple may have outbid Samsung for the panels.
Samsung really has the potential to be an industry leader. They make everything.
The actual quality is damn good, to me at least... I am still using a macbook pro as my daily that must be at least 6 or 7 years old now. (Intel core 2 duo) Maybe I am lucky, but it has been around the world with me many times, dropped and had 3 full glass spills into the keyboard. (2 were milk) BP size spills, as in, liquid was flowing out the back and the felt of the cd drive and also somehow the inside of the screen has stains. It still runs with no problems. I bumped up the ram and hard drive, and have been through 3 batteries. I have replaced the keyboard after one of the milk spills. The more we go through together, the harder it is to part... Retina screen sounds good tho.
I have two MacBook Pro's from 2007 which are still running strong. These are the 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo machines with 4 GB's of ram. They have been through a lot and I've had Apple fix various issues over the years on both of them, but disposable they are not.
I've replaced the batteries for them, actually, I've had Apple give me new batteries due to them failing early... but I've never had issues with Apple not servicing my laptop. They have dents in them, they have scratches from wear and tear, they have stickers all over them, but they still work extremely well. Still run the latest version of OS X, still run all of the software I use on a daily basis.
I used to own an iBook that I had purchased in 2004, an iBook G4, when I purchased my new MBP in 2007 I sold my iBook to my dad and he used it till 2010. The iBook is still up and running, it is simply too slow for my dads needs so he bought a new MacBook Pro and absolutely loves it.
This is basically a longwinded way of saying that I disagree with your assessment that they are disposable machines. The amount of life and longevity in a Mac are to be envied, and the way they hold their value even after a couple of years is simply awesome.
> the way they hold their value even after a couple of years is simply awesome.
Agreed -- I just sold my 2007 MBP and got enough back to buy a new iPad (retina version). That's more money than most brand new low-end Windows laptops go for (are there any non-low-end Windows laptops? I looked but couldn't find much from the major stores).
If you think about the original price that I paid (£1100) minus the sale price (£400), the total cost is really not that bad...
In the case of a spill it's most likely the case that something in your top case has been ruined. I had this happen to me on 2008 macbook that was otherwise fine. I looked into the used parts market and you can get a fine topcase for $50 and the install if pretty easy if you can use a screw driver. (I'm assuming the MBA is different in this regard, browsing around this seems to be the case)
Looking into it further at the time there's actually a good chunk of your macbook that you can fix yourself it's just not officially blessed by Apple
4 years ago, I spilled coffee on my MacBook. It started to act a little funky about detecting the battery, but otherwise worked fine. Since it was under (the extended Apple Care) warranty, and the Apple Store was a 20 minute drive away in Providence, I figured I 'd bring it by. They replaced the damaged logic board for me, gave me a refurbished battery (mine was down to ~70% capacity, unrelated to the spill), and then voided the warranty for any future repairs. I thought that was mighty fine of them, to be honest.
I'm still typing on it today. But man, those new retina MacBooks are tempting.
Regarding other manufacturers putting retina displays. While not quite retina level, ASUS did fire a preemptive strike against the MacBook Air, by releasing their UX21A and UX31A ultrabooks with 1920x1080 IPS displays. The UX21A 11.6" ppi is 189, not far from the new MacBook Pro 220 and perhaps more interestingly, now ASUS' ultrabooks have much better displays than the airs, with the 11.6" air being stuck at a measly 1366x768.
I have a MBP from 2007 and an Acer Aspire netbook from 2007, both running relatively strong and I've taken both around the world in a backpack several times (often together).
What's gone wrong with them?
MBP - The case is full of dents, and the screen is starting to get dark. It's balls slow these days and Apple really doesn't want to support it anymore.
Netbook - it can't detect how much battery is left anymore, but otherwise seems fine. It's also balls slow, and there's not really a way to support it.
All that being said, replacing my netbook with something similarly priced will cost me $300-400 and get me a hell of a lot better piece of hardware. Replacing my MBP is going to cost me a pretty penny that I'm not looking forward to.
Note: I actually did "replace" my MBP with a Dell Studio a couple of years ago for about a thousand bucks and got a ridiculous amount of hardware for that price. It still looks almost new, but it "feels" cheap and fragile, even if it hasn't actually shown any wear and tear. My MBP on the other hand feels incredible, but has collected so many battle scars from fairly undramatic handling that I wonder if aluminum really is a good case material in the long run. The metal around one of the ports in the back is so buckled the port is no longer usable.
Note 2: It's interesting, being an East Coastie, that when I see MBPs it's usually young professionals at Starbucks or some such putting together business consulting slide decks or something. It's mildly unusual to see developer types out here with Macs (or see them with Macs not running Windows). I'm sure it's an effect of banking and government on the ecosystem. But it's almost always non-tech types using Macs here...usually as a response to having crappy corporate Windows XP/7 systems forced on them in their cubes at work.
Note 3: I'm not really a developer type, so personally I think Macs are "OK". I can see why West Coastie Web Startups use them. The Unixland is decent enough, the GUI is pretty good etc. For folks who want to do that kind of stuff the ecosystem is pretty nice.
For me, most of the stuff I want to do with a computer either isn't as good, doesn't exist, or is a second class citizen in the Mac world (it's mostly music composition, retrogaming, other entertainment) but is miles ahead in maturity and choices in the PC world. Portable software practices make lots of that go away when I'm stuck on my Mac and want to have some fun, but it still feels less mature than the Windows counterparts.
For business, almost none of my customers are using Macs, so I'm back into Windows land again.
It's frustrating, I'll sit down to really work with my Mac for a bit (and did for a few solid years), but find myself inevitably drawn back into Windows world to "just get shit done" in many cases.
Running Windows on an expensive MBP seems silly as the hardware seems to be about as durable, but the Windows machines are virtually disposable they're so cheap...and I couldn't care less about the feel of the machine.
I think changing work environments to a different kind of shop would probably offer me a better opportunity to stick with OS X, it's a kind of network effect.
But outside of some personal frustrations, I can see why either ecosystem would be a perfectly valid choice.
I have found that XBMC makes for the ultimate entertainment PC. Simply install Ubuntu, put XBMC in autostart and enjoy. It catalogs all the movies and TV shows you've got on your HDDs and displays them in a stunning UI.
I do not own any apple products because they are outrageously expensive.
Why do I think I should buy Macbook Air? Because laptop should be that light and thin.
Why I use Linux? It's dead simple. A single command or a simple script can make system management and other tasks so straight forward and no brainier. I have total control on what I want on my system. Of course their is a learning curve but that's the main reason I visit HN.
iOS devices are best in class, or near the top at their price point. Apple laptops and desktops are pricey (although I would argue not outrageously so, especially if you're using them for work), but lower priced alternatives sacrifice a lot in terms of fit & finish.
If you like the Air, keep your eye on the market. intel and AMD are both trying to partner with OEM's to finally get some Air competitors out. I cannot recall the marketing name though.
Interesting. I love Macs and I have one for work, but for home I use Windows because Macs are so bad for gaming. Way I see it, Windows is close enough to being as good as Macs that it doesn't bother me too much to use it, but to my taste Macs are somewhat superior.
I don't think you'll be alone. With the retina MacBook Pros, Apple really is throwing down the gauntlet here.
And not just because of their advantage in hardware; Windows is notoriously hard to program for in a resolution independent way, and the first double resolution laptop displays are going to cause early adopters no end of pain. Even if Windows 8 brings APIs to fix it, the long tail of apps are not going to be updated any time soon.
I expect this to be an unusually large and concrete reason for everyday people to choose a Mac laptop for the next few years. Side by side, Macs will look amazing. Looked at a 3GS recently? Eww.
Of course, this is assuming OS X has resolution independence nailed; though I'd be amazed if they shipped this if that wasn't the case.
(This is a repost of my comment from a rumor thread; not much has changed)
OK, so I set my DPI to 200% to check, and I found errors in every app I tried (list below), except for Dropbox, and MonoDevelop. Mostly the errors involve not everything scaling up; certain images or pieces of text will be too small.
That said, it was all purely visual stuff, and the errors were more subtle than I was expecting, so maybe my prediction was a little strong. Though if you track off the beaten path, I'm sure it gets worse - that VB6 App you use to track warehouse supplies may be completely broken.
I don't want a "Retina display", I want a true 1920x1080 on my 15" MBP.
Apple is trying to impose that density is the same thing as resolution, which is not. A "Retina display" of 2880x1800 is just a "better" 1440x900.
Give me the option to choose between double pixels and real pixels and I'll buy thee.
Windows has had High DPI mode for quite awhile. Not sure if that will be compatible with the new MPB, but it should help. Too bad most windows apps are fairly broken in high DPI mode.
I've tried using the 125% and 150% DPI modes in Windows 7 on a 1080p display and the support is still rather primitive. My HP ENVY 15 actually shipped with 125% mode enabled by default. Lots of icons, graphical elements, and many fonts become blurry/pixelated when enabled.
I'm guessing a reason we haven't seen high DPI screens from Dell/HP/Sony/etc is partially because the Windows OS doesn't really support it that well just yet. Hopefully things have changed in Windows 8.
I'm having the same concern. I use all 1920 x 1200 in my standard workflow. I'm concerned about the lack of a 17" model, as this screen's physical width is just about the minimum that can support two side by side pages at comfortable reading font sizes. Pixel density is high enough already that I'm not persuaded more pixels will make smaller fonts any more comfortable, and 15" simply doesn't approximate two 8.5" x 11" pages side by side no matter what the resolution is. (Put two 8.5" x 11" pages over your 17" MBP screen; note they only hang off the edge by about a half inch.)
Full screen apps with the magic pad swipe between them mitigates this somewhat for apps like Mail, Sublime Text, or Terminal, but 1440 x 900 is a poor choice for dual page word processing.
That said, after development, my second most common activity is photo triage and editing. For this, the 15" retina display could present a far truer representation of what can be expected in the final print.
But I'm concerned about the "less glare" feature. I've also always and only purchased the matte screens. They have no glare, and no false brilliance from the glossy screen. For photo editing for print work, the matte screens have always felt more accurate. I'm curious if they've gone to a single screen surface, based on glossy, but with somewhat less glare. I'm not sure I'd be interested in that.
On the plus side, a MBP 17" only fits in carry on bags that can't quite go in a commuter jet's overhead bin, while the 15" will fit easily in most any commuter jet compatible bag.
That said, the iPad 3 64GB with iPhoto and SnapSeed can ingest and edit a great deal of photos even at today's DSLR resolutions. On recent trips, I carry an iPad 3 plus a Nextodi external portable photo HDD with integrated card reader. I edit one day's worth of photos on the iPad, while archiving the full memory cards on the Nextodi.
17" models seem to be disappearing all over. Lenovo has dropped them from all product lines except the "Essential G." System76 has dropped their 17" model. Since I've been thinking about getting a 17" Linux laptop this is getting a bit annoying.
Another 17" lover here. I think when I get one of these new ones -- which I will have to, at some point, I guess -- I'll also get a dental loupe so I can really use the resolution.
"Apple is trying to impose that density is the same thing as resolution"
I think you've confused "resolution" with "my preferred resolution". The new MBP has both a higher density and a better resolution then what you're looking for. You may be disappointed but I bet Apple thinks it can make more money by selling 2880x1800 MBPs.
It really depends on how OS X chooses to impose upon how the pixels are used. If the new "retina" desktop is merely a 1440x900 point desktop with much sharper fonts and artwork (much like how the retina iPhones are merely 320x480 point views), then this isn't necessarily desirable to someone who truly wants the higher-resolution workspace.
Care to explain? The "retina" iPhones have pixel dimensions of 640×960, where each pixel is composed of a red, green, and a blue cell. The OS UI widgets have been updated to display well on this new physical resolution. What do you mean by "how the retina iPhones are merely 320x480 point views"?
On those devices, Apple simplified the way UI layout is done by fixing the usable coordinate system at 320x480. As an app developer, you position things on retina devices no differently than on non-retina devices; placing a button at (160, 240) puts it at the center of the screen in both cases. The higher resolution / DPI is only used by the low-level font and graphics toolkit. As far as the developer and user are concerned, the device has a 320x480 "desktop" either way.
You can imagine an alternative scenario to this in which everything on the screen is half as big as it used to be yet equally detailed, with four times as many icons fitting on the home screen as before. This is what it would be like if the full resolution of the retina display were utilized just to provide more real estate instead of more detail.
That's a real flaw, a old 15" MBP with 1680x1050 would practically be a better choice. This is just dumb, that a 2880x1800 display is worse than a 1680x1050 display because of the way the software handles these resolutions. Unless I'm missing something...
That's interesting... I didn't realize this until you said it. I currently have the 15" MBP at 1680x1050. Buying the new retina display would be a downgrade in screen real estate, since it would show an equivalent 1440x900. Sure it would be crisper, but when I'm developing on my laptop, it's all about screen real estate.
How so? The new one has a physical resolution of 2,880 × 1800 pixels. The density is higher, so text can be scaled smaller and still be legible. Are you questioning how large UI widgets will appear?
In the worst case, the OS widgets will take up more space than you'd like. But for development most of your display is text, and you'll be able to significantly reduce the font size and maintain readability.
You'll eventually get better than 1920x1080 on your Retina MBP, because apps will adapt to the HiDPI APIs, and then you can scale all the critical parts (text views, graphics views, etc.) to be as tiny as you like and still get high-quality, and the same settings will work on the old non-Retina display but just look worse.
I.e., the approach they've taken is fully scaleable from current resolutions to high resolutions, but it'll take some cooperation from third-party software.
No, there are 2880x1800 pixels. If you want to use the full screen to show 1920x1080, you are non-native and the math doesn't even out since there aren't half pixels. Now if they had gone 3840x2160...
Scaling to 800x600 on a 1024x768 screen looks awful. I'm not sure that scaling a 2880x1800 screen to 1920x1080 is going be distinguishable from native resolution for anyone with eyes more than 15 years old.
I'm curious about Magsafe2. As a student, knowing that 20% of students on campus (those with Apple computers) use the same charger as me, I find it really easy to borrow a cable for 20 minutes to get charged up for class. I'm guessing Magsafe2 isn't compatible with traditional magsafe.
Update: It's not but they sell a $9.99 adapter "The MagSafe to MagSafe 2 Converter allows you to use the MagSafe connector on your LED Cinema Display, Thunderbolt Display, or MagSafe Power Adapter to charge your MagSafe 2-equipped Mac computer."
It looks and I would guess it would be magsafe 1 compatible. Maybe it has extra features or power to it. Pretty much any MB* can be charged on any power adapter albeit slower (or not at all if heavily using it).
I have been very surprised at how much more I use mobile data on my iPad now that it is built in - it just seems like too many steps to activate a hotspot or dongle, whereas if "it just works" I love it.
I'm sure as LTE gets going, you'll see 4g built in. I would bet you could fit 4 antennas in one. Which would give you some amazing throughput in a 4x8 MIMO setup. Of course the interference from the computer might cause a lot of issues?
There's no technology problem waiting to be solved. Laptop manufacturers could build in LTE chipsets today if they wanted to. The issue is that no cell carrier wants them to; it would create demand they're not prepared to meet. The current trend is just the opposite -- to lower monthly limits and increase prices for 4G data services. Creating more demand would just lead to cities where there are more people connected than the towers can handle.
> it would create demand they're not prepared to meet.
So what you're saying is carriers are not "technically" prepared to handle it? I wonder if 4g has any new technologies to handle making more efficient use of resources?
From my understanding of LTE, there's a lot of cool things being prepared in the specifications for 4G that make this scenario less burdensome. For instance femtocells are likely to become more common. I personally know of a specific carrier that's working on a technology so you can share resources between two sectors. OFDM in particular is good for minimizing interference which should allow networks to become more dense, I believe as technology evolves there's a lot of benefits to even the carriers to allow users to use 4G from their laptop.
> So what you're saying is carriers are not "technically" prepared to handle it?
No. I said what I meant; it's not a technology problem. Demand exceeding capacity in the short-term is a capital/resource allocation problem.
Capacity isn't constrained by a need for new specs or new hardware. It's constrained by most of the cell towers only having <50mbps backhaul for 3G. New towers need new radios, new equipment to drive it, and new backhaul to provide enough bandwidth to share among the connections. It takes a lot of time and money to upgrade and build out the network.
The carriers are carefully managing demand through pricing and service limitations so that it doesn't outstrip the rate at which they make those upgrades.
What would be the point when there's not a single US cell network that offers unlimited 3G data for computers? Or is there someone in California? There's not here. Might as well just tether from your phone since you can only do it a few times a month without hitting your data cap.
Well, there are cheap unlimited 3G data plans without restriction on the device here in Singapore, and I guess in other countries too. But I guess Apple's biggest market remains the US, right?
Who said anything about unlimited? 3 or 5 GBs of backup data for when you can't find or can't be bothered to find an open wifi network could still be quite nice. It won't replace your stream-HD-movies-all-day-wireless-N but it doesn't have to.
In the meantime I got myself this[1] and can highly recommend it. No more fiddling with USB-dongles, you can just leave it in the bag and a single button press gives you a Wifi->3G bridge (for up to 5 clients).
2010 Air did t have AES-NI either, which made FileVault slow. 2011 MBA just lacks 8gb; I think I will be sticking with mine since I do my heavy VM work on another machine.
Lack of gigabit Ethernet on the big pro air makes me sad, though.
There's already a thunderbolt gigabit ethernet dongle called the "thunderbolt display", although it's probably too big for people to carry around with them.
Except it isn't. The real problem is that the RJ-45 connector is huge and antiquated, so it can't fit on the MBA form factor. I work in a lot of places where GE makes a lot more sense (inside a datacenter, in places which prohibit wireless, or places where you want to be connected to multiple different networks). I guarantee the $99 (?) thunderbolt to gig-e dongle gets left on a cable somewhere several times, which will suck, same as the mbp/tb to DVI things.
Kind of silly given that the new Macbook Pro Air HD Super 15 has a better display than anything else I own, so I'm not going to necessarily want to put a 1920x1200 24" or even 2560x1600 30" in the center of my desk with it -- I'd treat the laptop display as primary, on a stand, with a keyboard. But Apple doesn't make a docking solution, and the Belkin/Matrox docks have been vaporware for over a year.
$30 for the ThunderBolt GigE adapter. It's possible people will lose them but you do have to physically disconnect the RJ45 from it before you can leave (unless you have a very long cable) so it's not a big problem really. Easier to lose your untethered car keys, wallet, etc.
Yeah, at $30 I'm not as upset. I still predict they'll be annoying, but if you bring your own cat5e cable too (vs. plugging into an existing cable), it's less likely it will be left behind. (I'll probably order one for my 2011 MBA anyway).
Keys/wallet/etc. remain in pockets when not in use, though -- so they're a LOT less likely to be abandoned than something which is small, connected to another long cable, etc.
TB display is 1) glossy, meh 2) only has the Apple connectors, so it's not usable by non-Apple equipment at all. Even when you use exclusively Apple laptops, it's a pain to not be able to plug servers/etc. into them temporarily. It's also too big to carry -- one use case for this kind of thing is to set up somewhere for a couple days (hotel room, consultant at a desk, etc.), where bringing a laptop and small dock is reasonable, but a 27" display, not as much. There's also the somewhat-longer replacement cycle on monitors; I'm fine with Dell 3011s or even 3008s from...2008, but all my laptops are 2011+.
Even when setting up hotdesks for guests, it's unclear if you could put just a TB display in them -- enough people will have non-TB macs, or non-macs, to require something else. Maybe you could have some percentage TB display, but a good third-party dock + a display which can take multiple inputs (DVI, HDMI, MDP via adapter, TB to adapter to monitor) seems like a better choice. Uglier, yes.
For personal/home use in a dark room with only 2011+ macs, and if you have a spare 15" for other temporary use, then sure, it's a good option.
I was going to say this, but I would say its slightly better because the "effective" pixels are sharper -- You could probably run a text editor with a smaller font and still feel comfortable.
I can't find any details regarding the existence of an optical drive on the new MacBook Pro. Has it been removed? Also, does anyone know how MagSafe2 differs from MagSafe?
Optical drive has gone the way of the floppy on the "next generation" MacBook Pro. It's still there on the "old" MacBook Pros that just got a spec bump today.
If you are hacking or doing office work (and not gaming), you can easily support an additional 1080p monitor over USB2 using DisplayLink tech. I did it in a former life using a 13" MBP and over a Belkin USB2 hub, even with no glitches.
With USB3 now, you could probably run several. I bet you could get 4 HD monitors easy.
2 external displays at the full thunderbolt display (2560 x 1600) resolution. I'm betting you could do more displays if the resolution is lower, however I don't think you can buy external displays with lower resolution that use the thunderbolt port.
Yes, I barely used it. The only thing I used the bay for was a secondary 1TB disk alongside with a primary SSD - which makes a good combination for data intensive development. Guess this option is now gone as well ...
As someone who appreciated the DVD drive because it could be removed and the space/connector used to install a second 2.5" hard drive, I see the removal of the DVD drive altogether as a negative.
This combined with on-board RAM and on-board SSD storage... are any of the components in these new retina display MacBook Pros replaceable?
Well, it was for me. I held off on the iPad until an iPad 3. After using an iPhone 4, when I picked up an iPad 1 or 2, I saw pixels everywhere. The main thing I use my iPad for is reading. I guessed that would be the case, so I held off on getting one until it had a high-resolution display that could display text without visible pixels.
I wouldn't say the main selling point but It's important. What do we use computers for? Reading and consuming media. Most media isn't "HD" yet but nothing is holding our written word from being rendered better.
Will you be able to configure different DPI settings per monitor on OSX, or will there be some iOS-like implicit 2x scale on retina displays? Otherwise this MacBook might be somewhat awkward to use with a non-"retina" external monitor...
I think the comparisons to the Macbook Air are misleading. At least for me, the distinct appeal of the Macbook Air is that it's light; either 2.38 or 2.96 pounds. The new model Macbook Pro may be a great laptop in many ways, but at 4.46 pounds it's not light. I'm going to notice that in my messenger bag to a much greater extent than I would an Air.
Hopefully the macbook pro with retina display supports 16gb of ram. Everything else sounds amazing, but being limited to 8gb of ram for another few years is going to hold me back.
The 2011 MacBook pros can handle 16 GB of RAM as well. It's not stated in the manual but if you put two 8 GB sticks in there it'll run just fine. I did it last month.
I have a true 1080P on my 13.3" Vaio Z notebook which I run at the full 1920x1080. I would stick with that over this new MB screen. It's all about effective resolution when you are trying to get things done and that hasn't changed on the MB.
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 436 ms ] threadEdit: I'm curious, why the downvotes?
That may be true, but they're going to need a monocle if they want to see 9-pt courier at native resolution on one of these bad boys.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolas
But hey, they finally made a Thunderbolt Firewire adapter cable.
I throw a lot of data around. I like backups. The difference between USB2 and USB3 will be non-trivial for me.
http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-ST0022U-Plastic-Docking-St...
all the thunderbolt ones are very expensive.
Then I watched this keynote.
I'm buying a Macbook Pro.
Edit: Given the lack of real interesting updates in OS X since Leopard and recent iOS versions, I am actually quite interested in Windows 8 and Windows Phone after ~18 years of using Unix-like operating systems and ~5.5 years a Mac.
I really miss "all windows" Exposé; Mission Control is not a worthy replacement. Any word on Exposé changes in 10.8?
I love my Macbook but can't stand the direction of the operating system. It feels like I use more and more hacks like the above just to have a usable machine.
Good news! There is a system preference in 10.8 to ungroup windows (by application) in Mission Control.
Still, the "spaces bar" and dock show up every time you use MC, so there's less real estate than on 10.5. Dragging to the Dock stopped being useful in 10.6 IMHO, that's still the same in 10.8. (In 10.5, dragging an icon to the dock in Exposé would act the same as clicking the icon - e.g. for Skype it would open the window if it was closed.)
iTunes must be the worst offender. I always fullscreen it, because I seldom access it but want it to use all of my 13".
Then I start a video podcast. It runs inside the iTunes chrome. I hit cmd+F, it opens a new space. I finish watching the cast. The space closes and I land on the desktop instead of back in iTunes. What?
I wish any high-level blogger would start caring about OS X usability again. 10.7 needs more and not less public shaming. I don't think anyone even noticed that mouse/trackpad click-through is different again in 10.7, and for the worse IMHO. :(
It has ALL versions of Xcode.
This one won't exactly fit in a manila envelope.
Such announcements provide opportunity for a pivot point. It isn't so much the announcement itself as that the announcement provides a claimed justification for changing positions.
I bought my first Apple product ever a few months back (an iPad 3rd generation). Then I added an Apple TV (ridiculously good value).
I still use Android for my smartphone (and have no plans on changing that anytime soon, considering iOS a serious downgrade on the smartphone side), however I have to confess that this release provides me such a pivot point for my desktop/laptop use. I'd long considered getting a Mac but could never justify it. Microsoft is so rudderless and ill-directed now, and Apple is so large and in charge, this product such a technical powerhouse, that I will likely grab a new MBP "Air".
Uhh, are you joking? In the past few years, Microsoft has shown the most direction in 2 decades. Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox are all converging on the Metro UI (which is a true breath of fresh air), and Microsoft has finally stopped allowing big business to hold back innovation on Windows. Windows 8 dumps the Start Menu, and on ARM, you won't even be able to install any traditional "Windows" software - everything will have to be in Metro.
Windows 8 tablets are going to be usable for actual productivity, rather than the consumption-focused nature of the iPad. Tablets that can convert into laptops and vice versa are going to become popular in the corporate world in a way that iPads never will, due to their lack of native support for Office.
OTOH, there are a lot of people that have grown tired of iOS. It's been out for 5 years now, and little true innovation has taken place since the release of the original iPhone. Upgrades to the iPhone have mostly consisted of adding features that should have been present all along, such as a proper notifications system (which still has problems) and support for 3rd party apps (which should have been present from the beginning). You still can't have widgets on the home screen, and the chance of Apple adding some kind of split-screen view, like you can get in Metro, is extremely slim.
As for OS X, it's an absolute nightmare. The window manager is horrific, and things are only going to get worse as Apple starts restricting the installation of software from non-approved sources, all in the name of a more "beautiful" experience.
Microsoft is a disaster currently, their navigation being "react to where Apple was two years ago". It is telling that every Microsoft defense extrapolates some fantastic future of what will be in the world of Microsoft, never using what actually is. But yes, I'm sure your imagination of a Windows 8 tablet is vastly superior to an actual real-world iPad.
The problem is perspective. The types of people that spend time on HN don't spend time in the real world, where the current state of affairs is very different from what we think it is. Apple gets a lot of hype, and no doubt the iPhone is very successful (because it was a new type of product), but the iPad is no more than than a glorified toy. Once Windows 8 tablets are released and become commonplace, the iPad will stand no chance. The ability to use the same device for casual consumption and for productivity cannot be understated. Try getting out of San Fran for a few days, and you'll start to understand what I'm talking about. There was a similar issue with Android a few years ago, but it seems even the most hardcore iOS fanboys (such as Marco Arment) have finally gotten on the Android train.
And don't forget about the TV. The iTV simply will not sell, because people are not going to throw out their existing TVs just so they can get the latest shiny toy from Cupertino. OTOH, MS has huge market- and mind-share in the form of the Xbox 360 (which has been the best-selling console for more than a year). You can already watch Netflix and HBO GO on it, and Amazon Instant support has just been added. Kinect has proven extremely successful, and with Project Glass, all kinds of new mashups are going to become realizable.
> I'm sure your imagination of a Windows 8 tablet is vastly superior to an actual real-world iPad.
Have you been living under a rock? Windows 8 is coming out this October. Several consumer previews have already been released, and hardware has been demoed. Windows 8 tablets are much more of a real entity than you seem to think.
There isn't any value to be had in arguing that Apple has designed a terrible product that has no reason to exist when it does not, in fact, exist. When and if Apple releases a TV product other than the current Apple TV, I'm sure it will be fascinating to see what form it takes and whether or not it manages to capture any meaningful marketshare. Until then, you're needlessly attacking a strawman based purely on rumors and hearsay.
If you think this is the case, you really don't get it. You may as well be living under a rock.
Windows 8 is going to go over like a fart at the opera. It's Vista all over again. They're pissing off developers and consumers at the same time. They really don't know how to pick their battles.
>Have you been living under a rock?
No, but it seems you have.
If I've said it before I've said it 1,000 times: Just because it doesn't fit your use case doesn't mean it doesn't fit that of others.
This is quite the non-sequitur. Apple products are successful precisely because they appeal to people in the real world. Your comment about the iPad being a toy is a timeless refrain that has been leveled against every single Apple product since the original Macintosh. That time, they lost to Microsoft because A) the Mac was way too expensive, B) the ecosystem was too small, and only by the standardization of the PC was a viable ecosystem able to emerge and C) Adoption was driven by businesses who purchase by checklists rather than by personal appeal. These same downsides no longer exist, and the iPad launch is one of the most successful new products in the history of the world.
Probably most on HN are hoping for MS to hit a home run with Windows 8 if for no other reason than to foster competition and innovation. But the other thing you have to realize is that Microsoft's "no compromises" approach is insanely difficult to pull off. It's much harder than what Apple has done, and the risk of creating a confusing product that does not resonate with customers is incredibly high.
Windows 8 tablets will sell, but not to the same demographic.
As for Xbox vs a TV made by apple, you'll be wrong again, mark my words. Things that come out of cupertino sell. Project Glass sounds like a response to Airplay to me.
Overall, you're trolling because you're a microsoft fan.
Not true. I use my iPad every day. My use varies from maybe 30 minutes of email to a good few hours. On my iPad I write, I organise my day, I handle notes and document recipes for things I cook. I deliberately try to keep it a personal rather than business device but I still use it for work email, calendaring and a few bits and pieces (mostly notes). I read incessantly on the iPad and it's my primary source of daily news.
> Once Windows 8 tablets are released and become commonplace, the iPad will stand no chance.
You're betting on an unestablished fractured software experience against the main market leader? I can understand Windows 8 standing a chance against Blackberry, against WebOS and maybe against pre-ICS Android but it will take a long time for Windows 8 to catch up with Android if it blows Android out of the water. Once it's managed to get that far there has to be something seriously wrong with iOS for it to overtake. Also if you're planning on betting on Office to see you through, hate to be the one to burst your bubble but Office has been available for the iPad for months, and the iPad's had office-compatible document readers/writers that are good enough for simple documents for years.
> The iTV simply will not sell
You are right, but this is because the iTV does not exist for sale. Apple haven't announced it. There is no iTV product.
> Have you been living under a rock?
There really is no need for this type of thing on HN.
> Windows 8 is coming out this October. Several consumer previews have already been released, and hardware has been demoed. Windows 8 tablets are much more of a real entity than you seem to think.
Can I buy a Windows 8 table now? No. Can I evaluate a consumer preview version of Windows 8 on an iPad? Yes. So in a way you're right, but given that the only real entities are the wrong devices running a prototype it's not fair to compare. However, having used the consumer preview in Parallels I have to say I'm not looking forward to metro on the desktop, but on the tablet it might work well.
- Xbox 360: 67.2 million (released 2005)
- iPad: 67.1 million (released 2010)
If I was working on the development team for the next generation Xbox I would be wearing diapers to work.
When you take out the expensive high-DPI touch-screen and the expensive battery, you're basically left with an AppleTV. Those sell for about third of the price of the current generation of the Xbox. If the next generation AppleTV had a nice Bluetooth controller and installable apps, it's very bad news for both Microsoft and Sony.
Sure; they're nowhere near being as focused purposeful as Apple is, but you can no longer say they are truly stuck in their ways. Whether that will translate into something tangible is another question, but it's hard to deny that something fundamental isn't changing at Microsoft.
Heck, I can't even honestly diss people's Windows mobile phones anymore, and that's nothing to sneeze at.
They completely overhauled Office. They've built wholesale online experiences, cloud services, and have purchased and entered new markets. They took the gaming market and owned it. They continued to make incredible progress with their development tools and runtimes/platforms.
The only difference this time is that they're risking it all because they're so afraid of Apple. They are essentially betting both their gaming and desktop experiences to desperately try to claw back in the smartphone industries. It is an incredible gambit that I think will prove to be a profound failure, but I think it's incorrect to see that as progress, any more than a salaryman betting it all on Red.
>They took the gaming market and owned it. Xbox360 is a distant second to Wii and only a nose ahead of PS3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars#Worldwide_sales_fi...). While it's certainly done better than its predecessor, I think describing it as "owning" is a bit of an exaggeration.
After this announcement, though; the Retina display, awesome graphics, HDMI port (Macbook dongles turned me off for a while), 700MBPS read on the hard drive (I'll have to confirm this -- that just sounds too sexy) -- Even the 0.70 inch thickness (I've never really cared about thickness before, but holy hell that's really thin). There are probably some things I've misinterpreted from these announcements, but so far, this laptop far outweighs what I thought was possible through existing PC laptop vendors.
About the dongles: in my use I usually take the laptop to the same places all the time, so I just buy the right cable (here it would be a thunderbolt -> hdmi cable i guess). If I go to random places where I need to hook up to a monitor I won't know whether they'll have a hdmi cable just as much as I don't know if they'll have a thunderbolt cable, so I need to carry a cable anyways. What's the difference whether it's a hdmi-hdmi or thunderbolt-hdmi cable? They're likely to have DVI or DP anyway, so you still need to take the dongles with you.
Yes.
> [...]
> In fact, why not just have three Thunderbolt ports
Avoids needing a dongle when plugging into an HDTV or an HDMI overhead projector, I'm guessing. They probably considered the pros and cons and ended up thinking two TB ports were enough and HDMI was requested often enough it would make sense, especially as they'd axed both GigE and FW800.
And one of the TB port will often be used for e.g. a GigE adapter.
Personally, I'm surprised that the Thunderbolt<->GigE dongle is only $30. That's barely got to cover the cost of the TB chip in the thing.
Aye, the whole laptop has something like 0.05" over a standard ethernet port, so you'd have to carve the lid or something.
And again. People HATE buying, carying, and remembering dongles.
I don't know how much that will translate over to a computer, but it wouldn't surprise me if people who work with text a lot (including programmers) are able to comfortably use significantly smaller font sizes than they ever were able to before.
By all rights I should be the biggest fanboy ever. All my computers are Macs. I have an Apple TV. I stood in line to buy the first iPhone on launch day and have owned nothing but iPhones since. I have an iPad. I insist on using Apple services like iTunes so everything "just works" with all my Apple devices. I even converted my whole family from PCs to Macs and, yes, my "family tech support" calls have dropped.
But I'm not what you would call a "fanboy".
If someone asks why I like Apple products, I try to give rational reasons but I admit from the start that I'm biased and just "like them", plus I "think they're cool". I never sneer at PC users or people with Android phones. I don't make lame jokes about "Winblows" and such.
I guess my point is it's possible to become a total convert and still not annoy the heck out of everyone around you. I'm not saying you don't know that, just that you should monitor yourself. Once you become loyal to a brand (Apple, BMW, B&W loudspeakers, whatever) it's sometimes difficult to tell the difference between being a proud evangelist and an annoying cultist.
Luckily, I had some friends who helped me whenever I veered too far in the latter direction. :)
It's a well-built solid metal portable development workstation. With BSD UNIX. And a pretty layer on top.
Among programmers, I never need to explain why we would buy these things.
It's outside the programming groups that the conversation gets hostile. I find most programmers avoid this completely, knowing that they're simply using the best tool available for the job, and ignoring the hype, criticism, and fanboyism. Props, hackers, keep it up.
*edit: Wow, -10? Sorry, I was just sharing my experience of being mocked by people who proudly brag about their Windows 7 machine and are barely proficient at .NET programming who give me a hard time because "Macs are lame and Windows is for geeks".
Didn't know there were so many fucking yuppie Windows people to be so defensive. Jesus. Literally, 10 people downvoted this. Stay classy. (And the GP backed up what I said anyway, jerks)
<tongue-in-cheek>
The Linux users generally consider OSX a nice Linux-like OS that lacks a decent package manager ;-)
Much like Microsoft, the hardware is great.
</tongue-in-cheek>
Disclaimer: I am mostly a Linux user who also uses Macs for certain tasks.
And microsoft is actually really generous towards students, I can get basically any software except for office for free.
When I'm on a Mac, I'm a ports guy. MacPorts is probably the first thing I install on every Mac I lay my hands upon. That, iTerm2 and Cathode (who can resist that?)
> And microsoft is actually really generous towards students, I can get basically any software except for office for free.
The first one is always free. They will only bill you when you actually need what they offer. Chances are, when you do, you won't be able to easily move away.
Many of my teachers eventually would relent and realise that yes I was right. TCP/IP is one of the classes I took in which Windows was required. TCP/IP is a network protocol, it is available in all major OS's. I turned in entire assignments with a simple note "Windows required, don't have Windows." Luckily I didn't end up getting docked points because they realised I already knew all of the information in the course.
One thing that was really nice, and I am surprised none of the teachers used it against me was the fact that with MSDNAA I as a student had access to thousands of dollars worth of Microsoft software. You name it I could download a free legal copy of it for use during my tenure at college as a student. Microsoft seems to have that on lock. What better way to get students to play with your platform than to have them use all your tools and software free of charge. Windows 7, Visual Studio, SQL, SharePoint, Exchange and others.
The fact that I have at least part of the knowledge makes me more valuable for an employer.
I hope you have better experiences.
Look: I'm not singing the praises of these softwares, it's big clunky enterprise stuff and it is boooring... None the less: it's running some pretty important processes that combined run a large portion of the worlds I.T.
Now step back and read this comment, as well as your PowerShell response below, then rethink why I'd say that.
You're like a badly broken record no matter what it is you're spouting. Seriously where do you get off following me around talking about the same things over and over just to be an obnoxious ass? Just leave me alone, you're creepy and obviously have some misplaced superiority complex, well maybe inferiority given how much you seem to stalk and put me down.
These Mac vx. PC arguments now beyond ridiculous. To those of us for whom computers are tools and not just a way to get on Facebook the metric should not be emotion or fan-boy-ism but rather applicability, efficiency, utility, cost and other factors.
I have a roughly equal number of PC's and Macs. I use both. I enjoy both. I get angry at both. There are good things with both OS's and there are thorn-in-my-ass problems with both. Welcome to having choices. As tools they are both fantastic. I love having unix behind the scenes with MacOS. Brilliant decision on their part. On the PC side, I have come to appreciate the non-nonsense cost-effectiveness of the platform. I have very powerful workstations setup for FEA fluid and heat simulation that cost a fraction of what our nicely-equipped Mac Pro's cost. And they rock.
I could say more but have to get back to work. There you go, a downvote with an explanation.
Ironic that I'm now at -15 for pointing out that in my situation, the opposite was true.
Seriously, which part of my comment has every Windows fan out there thinking I hate Windows? I don't know how that was the takeaway when I was merely remarking on the times where I, like the grandparent, was trolled by Windows users.
It's too bad that Apple is moving to MagSafe II with the new retina MacBook Pro. I guess we'll all have to carry around adapters now: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD504
If using a thinner connector let Apple fix that problem, that would be quite nice. Of course it's possible that it didn't. I haven't had a chance to try the new thing.
(http://www.speckproducts.com/satin-macbook-air-case-13-black...)
Then I saw the backward-compatibility adapter[1]. It's not so bad. You can probably just leave it on the computer (or cable) 24/7 and never notice it. It's _tiny_, and only $10. Whenever I end up with a device that uses it, I will probably just buy 10 of them and leave 2 or 3 in every bag I own.
Still debating if I want to drop $4k just for retina, as my current machine is the quad-3.4 iMac with 32GB. I will probably wait for a retina Air or retina TB Display.
Now, if they'd made it a clunky dongle, or charged more than $15, I would be sharpening my pitchfork. Connector conspiracy or no, I get the impression that this was a situation where this was the only possible way to get the new case just right.
It's not like they'd do this just to fuck with us - the thing has asymmetric _fan blades_, for fuck's sake.
[1] http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD504
I suppose I've read one too many "why does my computer use all its RAM?!?!" threads...
Grain of salt. Experiment. Do what works.
It's a jealousy tick.
I remember the same behavior in high school (which was a long time ago). People would make fun of you for anything you were really obsessive over.
It appears that both of the major computer platform makers have come to the same conclusion: they don't want to make computers that their customers can program for their own purposes; they want to make ever-more-tightly-sealed point-of-sale devices for buying digital products and services from the device maker and its partners.
In other words, if you think the sealed iPhone, tethered to giant companies with strict rules about what you may and may not do with it or put on it and its design esthetic of "enjoy the beauty, stop resisting, do exactly as we say, and why not buy something with it, you'll feel better" is your idea of a great "pocket computer" for hackers, then you should be happy about where our computers are going. Otherwise....
I think we hackers are going to be driven to Linux on the desktop over time, which I would have no objection to if only there were an "Apple for Linux" company making the hardware and matching drivers of Apple-level quality. I can live without MacOS, but the hardware is a big deal.
They're eating the seed corn, but they don't really care since they won't feel the effect for 15 years or more. I personally don't care much either, unless they manage to fully legislate their locked boxes as the only option... which they are trying to do whenever we aren't looking, by the way, the most recent being with Microsoft locking out other OSes on their ARM boxes.
Yes. It's clear that Apple considers the relative openness of Macs a defect which they're only keeping around for backwards compatibility.
unless they manage to fully legislate their locked boxes as the only option... which they are trying to do whenever we aren't looking
Or even when we are. Apple has been quite open about their desire to destroy Android with IP lawsuits, which would leave no significant mobile platform where you can legally run software of your choice. And I won't be at all surprised if the next version of OS X removes root access and the ability to run unsigned apps. (Neither of which you actually need in order to develop software for the app store; your test apps can be signed with a machine-specific key).
That said, I'm still getting the retina MBP as an upgrade from my 2006 model. AFAIK it still supports booting Linux if OS X becomes too user-hostile. It would be nice if every other PC manufacturer hadn't spent the last 5 years making their laptop displays worse, but oh well.
This is not remotely clear. Do you really think Apple wants the App store to dry up because they are the only people left who can develop for it? The Apps make the app store and they know this.
In order to keep such things being developed, Apple will need to provide an adequate development environment.
Thus, Apple has an incentive to keep both worlds alive.
The only thing to worry about is that, because they only have the incentive to keep their development ecosystem merely adequate, we won't see much improvement in developer tools – just slow, linear change. Fortunately Xcode has competition from Visual Studio to keep it going, but whether they will continue offering a competitive BSD development environment is a legitimate question. Most Linux distributions already provide a better experience in this respect, having package managers and user communities and such.
Ultimately, I find the attitude you present here to be a bit overreactive. Lion and Mountain Lion introduce a number of iOS-like features and integration, but as far as I know, the developer tools were not crippled in any way, only improved, a bit.
I absolutely love HomeBrew, it is modeled a lot after MacPorts/FreeBSD ports tree and provides a way to compile packages from source (some are even hosted as bottles... no compiling required). It is an excellent tool to download and install libraries and do development with. Will Apple keep all those tools around? Only time will tell, but so far it is looking good and I don't think it is in their best interest to move away from it.
Keynote was and is a great presentation application. But PowerPoint 2008 surpassed it, PowerPoint 2011 even more. The only major feature missing from Powerpoint is magic move. Other than that, PowerPoint has better table and chart tools, better graphics, and at the very least adjusts font sizes automatically when necessary.
By catering to them, Apple doesn't take anything away from you; though they do eventually entrap you as well with all that shiny and convenience, which I can understand being resentful about. It's a bit disempowering when a company thinks it knows what's good for you better than you do, and ends up being kinda right about it.
I completely agree with you that making the computing experience simpler, more like poking buttons on a high-end blender, is what most consumers need. Satisfying what most consumers need is most likely what the companies need. The companies have as much right to want what's best for themselves as I do. They're not doing anything wrong, IMO.
That does not automatically make their design decisions a reflection of their superior knowledge of what's good for me, even "kinda".
Linux-like customization on top of Apple-quality hardware/driver foundations in form factors like the iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro, and MacPro, would be what would be good for me, but I'm not saying anybody owes it to me.
I am thinking, though, that as the two major personal computer platforms become more closed, it gradually opens a market for some savvy company to go in the opposite direction: targeting those who want more customization, not less, without sacrificing hardware quality.
If that ever does happen, that will be what's good for me.
Even customization is becoming easier. Consider the ease of jail breaking iOS vs rooting an Android device along wth the push button tweakability that is Cydia and you quickly realize that even the tinkerer/customiser world is headed for liberation from complexity.
The world of code and hackers and the purity of possibility will always be there but bringing greater Technological ability to all people is an important goal, a worthy challenge and one that the major players all seem to be taking on.
This is a very, very good thing because the dream and power of technology is far too great to be bound to the world of 'power users' and the like. The are wonderfully intelligent and creative people in the world who happen to fall outside of that category and we all stand to gain from their contributions.
It's not abut what's good for you. It's about what good for us.
I see your point but that is what I was referring to.
My point (poorly made perhaps) is that I have heard people say, "Oh, don't worry about Apple's walled garden, anyone with technical knowledge can be out of it as soon as they want, with jailbreaking". However, there are clearly long periods of time when that isn't true.
Incidentally: I found myself in exactly the same position with iPad 2. It seemed as if it was all hinging on release date of the next iteration of the OS and I did wonder at tine if Apple had perfected their game of cat and mouse.
Good point dude(ette).
All 10 of them? Maybe VA Linux has a market after all.
I Hackintoshed my desktop (because we're never getting another Mac Pro) specifically because of driver support. It's actually better in Hackintosh-land than on Linux.
Did you submit any bug reports?
Sure, I like getting a new shiny thing just like anybody else. But it does seem a little less shiny once I've tried to put my employer's dev environment on it and found that Apple's customized version of a common C library broke the build. Or an Oracle dependency we (very unfortunately) have hasn't been upgraded by Oracle in a couple years and crashes on the new OS.
The lot of the programmer seems to be that you never get to have your tools "just work".
That retina display is dead sexy though.
- The unified menu bar makes sense and saves space, but it's still somewhat disconcerting to someone who is used to their menus having some spatial context with what they are controlling.
- I've always hated the "three gumballs". I much prefer Windows' minimize, maximize, and quit windows controls. Again, the "maximum useful size" feature makes sense, but it's almost never what I want. I really miss Aero snap. There are some programs that will help you out for this stuff. I'm pretty partial to Moom myself. UPDATE: Moom JUST got updated with a "snap to corners" feature. I like it!
- The Finder is still pretty brain-dead. Windows explorer is much better for a power-user.
- And then there's XCode. Oh how I miss Visual Studio. Yes, XCode is getting nicer by the year, but I also do Windows development on my Parallels VM so I'm constantly reminded of how much nicer it is to code C# in Visual Studio than Objective-C in XCode (and I don't even mind Objective-C as a language).
I'm thinking regular users don't use the finder either. My wife uses spotlight to find her stuff and apps.
The new Windows 8 Metro UI will create an ever bigger gap between the two it seems.
All that being said, w/r/t an OS it seems like the one you're most comfortable on is the one you should use. Its really hard to say any one that is objectively better at this point.
It took some time to relearn my windows modifier keys (CMD = Windows Key; ALT is where the Windows key normally is), but after that expense I run Mac and Windows app in the same session, and more importantly, without switching hardware.
[edit: I've only used Snow Leopard]
There was a time (don't recall which iterations) in which the MAC OS finder didn't support those three for _files_ - but I think they've always worked for images/text/etc...
"Command-C" then "Command-Option-V" will remove the originating file.
I actually like it better; you get to decide how to treat the files when the operation is actually executed, not when you initiate it. This negates the need to go back and remove the files when you realize you meant to Ctrl-X instead of Ctrl-C.
A source: http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/29/cut-and-paste-mac-os-x-lion/
(And to the other replies: he means in Finder. Cutting files hasn't been possible prior to 10.7)
[1] http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lock-me-now/id464265594?mt=12
One constant, though: over the past 10 years, I've moved my life further and further into the Cygwin command line, so that I'm insulated from the frippery going on at the edges; with my setup, I'm approximately as at home on Linux, Solaris, Mac and Windows. I'm not optimistic based on what I've seen of Windows 8's direction.
Or a BSD.
Linux GUIs (Android only partially excepted), in my experience, are amateur in the worst way: dilettantish, faddish, inconsistent, incomplete, and replaced with something new and differently broken long before any stability emerges. I also really dislike the UI scaling: the font selection, border sizes, etc., KDE / Gnome defaults are all too widely spaced for my taste, and customizing it so that it would be acceptable seems to be a full-time job. As it is with Windows, I had to install Classic Shell to get a usable explorer tree view and start menu I could live with.
There isn't a single graphical app available exclusively for Linux that I'm jealous of. And for command-line / server stuff that's Linux-only, I'm perfectly happy with ssh running in mintty on Windows.
You don't like the KDE/Gnome defaults and don't want to spend time customizing. Fonts? Install from package manager. Themes? Install from package manager. Or download from gnome-look.org and install using gnome-tweak-tool. Yet you go out of your way to tweak Windows to your liking.
I don't have driver issues, but that's from researching purchases before buying.
And what about package managers? Cygwin has a package manager; combined with cygports, it has just about everything I need, resolves dependencies just fine. I also mirror both repositories locally, where the relatively smaller sizes (18G + 19G) pay off, and I don't have to be worried about internet connectivity to install an app.
Package managers on Linux (I run Ubuntu Netbook and Debian), Solaris (I run Nexenta NCP3) have given me plenty of headaches, mostly from packages disappearing from repositories, or repository servers going away. There's been times I've just wanted to e.g. update my text editor to the latest version, and started pulling on a thread that led to needing a new kernel - that never happens with Cygwin. Stuff starts failing to install because dependencies are no longer available. It's probably because I don't update enough, which is in turn because I don't want to break something that works (none of these machines are public facing); but I can go years between Cygwin updates without issues.
Look at the information density of Windows explorer details view - http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2GNT8vlZj48/SK54tc5PEzI/AAAAAAAAAC... - I could never get Nautilus to display data with this density, listview items always had huge margins around every item in the details view, like in this picture: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NwFlqMh7ZG0/Ty3Qrbk2gqI/AAAAAAAAAd...
Driver issues: I don't have any, and I don't have to research anything! When I need a new machine, I just buy the latest hardware (for example, currently I have an Nvidia 680GTX), download the latest driver from the vendor, and it works. Linux? Just look at this fun here: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA4O...
That's what multiple workspaces are for. Tiling WMs are especially great when working with large and/or multiple monitors. You're not forced to always use tile mode, you can easily switch between layouts via hotkey: http://xmonad.org/tour.html
Also, a lot of smart people disagree with you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3964530
> <Package management>
You don't want to update for fear of breaking something, yet you admit your problems stem from never updating.
Have you thought about Debian Stable/Ubuntu LTS releases?
Are you really complaining that Debian/Ubuntu package availability? Even if the main servers disappeared, you're ignoring the fact that there's plenty of mirrors. What happens if microsoft.com disappeared?
> <file browser density>
Hit Ctrl -: http://i.imgur.com/0xWSw.png
Explorer looks less dense, doesn't have tabs, split panes, copy queuing, real file modification tracking (Explorer requires F5 to see changes). It doesn't auto-adjust column widths, look at file size as an example. Not to mention the explorer.exe process doubles as the WM, so when it crashes all windows get reset.
Nautilus has a better hotkeys. Alt + Home to jump back to home directory, F9 to see symlinks to common directories, Ctrl + H to toggle hidden files, Ctrl + 1/2/3 to change views.
You could have not chosen a worse program to compare between the two OSes.
> <driver issues>
That's a result of market dominance, not anything intrinsically different between Windows and Linux. Congrats!
Have you tried installing a clean version Windows 7 on a laptop? Have you noticed how many proprietary drivers you have to download and install? I did this a few months ago with a new X220 and spent 4 hours finding, downloading, and installing drivers. If Lenovo.com disappeared, I'd be SOL.
Take any laptop and clean install Ubuntu and Windows without internet access. You will have a better working system with Ubuntu.
Due to lack of proprietary drivers, Linux actually has much better support for older hardware. Not to mention a large source of Windows BSODs are due to low quality, 3rd party drivers running in the kernel.
I can have multiple workspaces on Windows too, but it doesn't suit my work style. Don't care that smart people disagree with me; there isn't a person in the world with whom I agree on everything. I like to think the things I do differently make me better at some things than most people.
Updates: I don't want to break anything, that's correct. Updating for the sake of updating is an unnecessary risk; but you have it backwards. It's the experiences of broken updates that cause me not to update more often. If MS.com disappears, nothing breaks. I can still install all my stuff, without even going online. Even activation can be done on the phone.
Explorer density: that screenshot is actually from a post complaining about the lack of density in Vista's version of Explorer, you can read about it here: http://blog.barrkel.com/2008/08/venting-on-vista.html ; but I think you may be mistaken in what you think I use Explorer for. I use it almost exclusively for browsing filesystem contents, and for editing more complex Windows ACLs; I use the command-line for actual moving, copying, etc. Furthermore, Explorer file change tracking does actually work; part of my complaint in that blog post was how they changed file tracking in Vista such that it didn't wait for F5 to resort. I'm not a fan of auto-resizing of columns; it's a feature I'd turn off.
I have a way of working with Windows in conjunction with Cygwin that I've honed over 10+ years. I don't need F9 to see symlinks to common directories; common directories are symlinks in my Cygwin home directory, and in the rare occasions I want to browse them, I open them by typing "start ~/docs" or similar - but I usually don't browse them, because I mostly use Explorer for browsing unfamiliar files. My settings for Explorer is to never hide hidden files; my ls alias does. Things are set up and complement one another in just the way I like them.
Yes, market dominance; I can get the best of both worlds by using the dominant OS along with all the free tools provided by Cygwin. This is a good thing, selfishly speaking.
Offline Linux? I've tried that numerous times, particularly from 1996 through to 2002, when I gave up on Linux for a long spell and doubled down on Cygwin. The biggest pain? Needing to install an app, going into work where there was internet access, downloading a .deb or .rpm, then trying to install it - without luck, because it needs dependencies, recursively. It was a nightmare. With Windows, the apps I need are generally .zip, .exe or .msi, and include everything.
Every laptop I've ever bought, I've reinstalled the OS from scratch; I've never owned a Windows PC with an OS I didn't install myself. I wouldn't touch the drivers from Lenovo for hardware I could find anywhere else; OEM drivers are usually out of date, and often include "utilities" that you don't need, with a half-dozen icons in the notification area and another dozen services running in the background. It's the OEM setup that make me clean reinstall the OS.
First thing to do when reinstalling the OS on a system is to collect a manifest of all the hardware in it, and locate drivers before the install rather than after. I used to work as a computer hardware technician before I became a developer; I've built, upgraded and fixed hundreds of PCs, reinstalled MS OSes countless times.
Biggest source of Windows BSODs in my experience? Bad RAM :) (Probably followed by failing or corrupt HDD causing kernel paging errors. Reasonably rare to be a bad driver - in my experience; usually poor drivers are associated with cheap hardware.) Lack of drivers for older hardware has never been a problem; I generally never run hardware more than 18 months old.
<rant>
Linux support for new hardware is so crappy, it's unbelievable. I couldn't even launch ubuntu GUI setup because it preloads noveau, which causes kernel panics on my video card (nvidia gtx 560 ti). You have to spend hours in google to get anything to work, and it's embarrassing and humiliating at the same time.
Also, cough, fonts, cough.
</rant>
At a high level, they're really just upgrading to Ivy Bridge, USB 3.0, and Retina displays across their notebook line. Nothing mind-blowing really.
Not all areas of tech allow this kind of big jump. For instance, battery life, or spinning disk access times.
So the new display technology is notable in that regard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors
So I'm having issues with the statement that technology continuously improves. In many areas that's just not true.
Stagnating for decades?
Two decades ago (1992), where was your high-resolution LCD monitor?
The link shows a high-res flat panel monitor that was announced for production at $18,000 about a decade ago. Technology improves, price comes down. Call it about a 20% year-over-year cost reduction for the decade.
It may be more accurate to say that technology mainstream technology improves in leaps and surges, rather than "continuously". Sometimes the same technology gets cheaper, sometimes new technology replaces older technology, but next year's is almost always better and/or cheaper than last year's.
That said, I am delighted that the improvement in laptop displays is shifting back to "better" instead of just "cheaper".
It looks like the big difference in price is not the display, but the hard drive.
But you're absolutely right. There's nothing in this one single keynote that's like WAPOWW!!!!
Edit: Oh, and as soon as I have a job, I'm getting one! I've been drooling over Ivy Bridge specs for months.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-4000-Benchmar...
EDIT: found a nice resource for the specific models http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/474/Intel_Core_i5_Mobile_i5...
Unless you use that other text editor, you know, the one that makes you always have to reach for the escape key...in that case, I suppose you should map it to escape instead.
Nonsense. Map caps lock to control regardless of whether you're an emacs or vim user. If you use vim, control+c does the same as escape and since vim does still use control sometimes, it makes sense to keep control easy to access and just use that (IMHO very easy to press) key combo instead.
But ctrl-[ is exactly the same.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1578 http://www.tow.com/2007/12/18/apple-wireless-keyboard-review...
If you want an living room PC for entertainment, Windows is king. Neither Linux or OSX support Bluray properly and Windows still has a huge edge in gaming. Windows also supports the most hardware. That's become unimportant to most people, but if you work in a research lab with various oddball computer controlled devices around, you are often forced to work with Windows simply because that's the only OS supported by drivers for a lot of things.
OSX is the perfect OS for your mother. There's the one "Apple way" of doing things, so if she needs help it's easy to give her some. OSX gets decent battery life (on mac hardware) and still has a few Unix friendly features that haven't been locked away by Apple yet. If you're looking for a ghetto linux workstation, OSX will do in a pinch. I actually spent the better part of last year working under OSX on a Mac Book air. I've used Mac's off and on for decades and this is just the most recent stint (The MBA hardware lured me in this time). It worked, but the OS still puts up too much fight you when you try to customize it. OSX has also gotten rather buggy. I'm relieved to have retired it. As I said, while it would be great for my mother I personally detest OSX. Also, Mac hardware is moving away from the DIY crowd. e.g. The MBA's actually use proprietary screws to keep you out of your own laptop's innards. If you've ever saved a laptop from a coffee spill by disconnecting the battery and opening it up and doing a little cleaning, just bear in mind you won't be able to do that with most future macs.
Linux is bug central. Don't get me wrong, it's come a long way from the days when Slackware was king. You can install Ubuntu and almost everything will just work. The devil is in the details though, and if you have a low tolerance for flakiness you'll have to tweak away. However, no other OS is as powerful and flexible. If you want it to do X, it can do X in dozens of different ways. If the journey is as important as the destination for you, Linux is your OS.
Windows is all things to all people, but entertainment first and foremost. OSX is for your mother or people who would rather not use a real computer. Linux is for those who embrace the quest. Decide (and be honest with yourself) what kind of user you are and your OS preference will become clear, although what you are forced to use may be different. I currently use both Windows and Linux extensively, and occasionally help my Mom with OSX.
Perceived hardware quality is something Apple is fantastic at. Their laptops look and feel great. They feel like they'll last decades. This is misleading since they're actually built to be disposable. e.g. If you spill coffee on your Macbook Air, it's dead. You can't fix it because you can't remove the battery in a timely fashion and don't have the tools to open it. Apple won't fix it because their warranty doesn't cover spills. They won't even open it up and help you clean it up. They'll just tell you it's now off warranty and to kindly buy another or PFO. This is the big apple lie. Their stuff feels like heirlooms, but it's built to be binned at the first sign of trouble or obsolescence (or when the non-user-replaceable battery inevitably fails).
For some strange reason Apple has managed to put retina displays in their laptops before LG or Samsung (who probably manufacture those panels) manage to put them in their own laptops. While other laptop manufacturers are pretty timid about doing new things these days, they are getting faster at following in Apple's footsteps. We'll likely see Samsung or LG putting out their own laptops with retina displays within a few months. At least some of them will have proper screws that you actually own a screwdriver for.
Samsung really has the potential to be an industry leader. They make everything. SSD's, memory, displays, you name it. Some of their efforts (e.g. the Series 9) have actually been innovative in certain small and specific ways. It's frustrating to watch them sit back and let Apple do things "first" with their own parts though. Someone at Samsung is really dropping the ball and I hope they're shown the door soon.
Amen brother. It's astonishing to me that so much of what Apple creates is actually made by Samsung, and yet they constantly seem so far behind.
Have you seen their new 15" Ultrabooks though? They are awesome. 15" screen and weighs more than a pound less than the new MBP (obviously, with tradeoffs)
http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/laptops/NP900X4B-A02US
Biggest tradeoff being the Samsung has a low voltage (slow) dual core vs a full speed quad core plus a massive GPU. I don't think we'll see anything much lighter than the Macbook just due to the need to vent the heat. It's considerably lighter than any other quad I know of.
That or Samsung just doesn't care about being the first to the gate.
The batteries are actually designed to last for many years and pretty easy to replace with a screwdriver.
My MBP from 2008 is still going strong, and that's the less solidly built pre-unibody. Unlike many others, Apple extended the warranty because of the nVidia chipset bug.
From what I hear, Apple can sometimes be nice about accidents, but other times they're sticklers about the rules.
There's nothing strange about this. Apple has been pushing very high resolution as a differentiator for 2 years now. They've made huge investments in new factories for Toshiba, Sharp and likely other display makers. They've signed huge contracts taking almost all the production from other vendors. It's not like tomorrow Samsung Mobile can say "shit tear up that $3 bln deal with Apple we want to make a 2880x1800 laptop now"
"Samsung really has the potential to be an industry leader."
The fast follower strategy has been ingrained into Samsung for what, decades? I don't see how it's frustrating to watch them execute the strategy they've been very successful with and I don't expect them to turn around and bet the farm on a new market leading approach.
My Thinkpad is only a few years old, and the cooling system is acting up, I'm also having keyboard issues (even after replacing it) and just isn't worth bothering with. My old Macbook Pro on the other hand still practically runs like new, and never had to be repaired for anything.
I wish people wouldn't make claims based on speculation.
The only thing the newer macbooks would beat mine on would be games, and I just don't play very many. When I do its usually casual like Plants vs Zombies or whatever.
It's lasted longer and fared better than any other laptop I've owned (14" vostro, 13" inch vaio, 17" HP). It has simply been the best laptop I've every owned.
I have done upgrades, the best of which being an SSD. Without that, I'm sure I'd be feeling the pain of old hardware. I pulled the optical drive out and moved my mechanical drive to that bay for extra storage.
The casing has a few very minor nicks, and I did take it in to the apple store to get new rubber "feet" a few months back (under warranty).
I love my macbook pro. Someday I'll upgrade again, if the logic board gives out or something. Probably to a new macbook pro. Perhaps not though, the other manufacturers are catching up with their ultrabooks.
This laptop has been the first computer I've owned where I haven't felt like I was "fighting" with it to get work done.
The "retina" display is the first thing they've done that has me actually wanting to buy new hardware.
I've never used a Thinkpad, though, so I can't say whether it would have fared better or not.
Well... my 2006 T60p is in great shape. Original hard drive, battery only 14.7% down from its original capacity.
My 2004 X31 is still ticking and it's been through a lot. Zero problems with the electronics although to be fair I did upgrade the hard drive in 2007.
The latest T's and X's are better, but your average 60p has a better monitor than nearly all of the current tpad line.
Looking at the IPS-equipped X220 for my next laptop :)
I'll rate that as damn good. Only damage was cosmetic other than that it was in great shape. I think you may be rating the macbook pro too low. I've seen people drop their thinkpad and having them go boom.
Yes yes anecdotal evidence blah blah. But I place a lot of props to that macbook pro surviving a motorcycle accident. Its been retired along with the helmet that saved me. Just my $0.02
In the end, I took a 6 year old computer to an Apple store and walked out with it looking more or less new, for free.
Apple's service is nothing short of amazing. I doubt IBM would have done that to your Thinkpad.
Battery replacement is $99.
For some strange reason Apple has managed to put retina displays in their laptops before LG or Samsung (who probably manufacture those panels) manage to put them in their own laptops.
Windows probably doesn't support retina properly (which is sad, considering that MS has been working on retina support since Vista). Also, Apple may have outbid Samsung for the panels.
Samsung really has the potential to be an industry leader. They make everything.
Except software.
http://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro/service/battery/
I've replaced the batteries for them, actually, I've had Apple give me new batteries due to them failing early... but I've never had issues with Apple not servicing my laptop. They have dents in them, they have scratches from wear and tear, they have stickers all over them, but they still work extremely well. Still run the latest version of OS X, still run all of the software I use on a daily basis.
I used to own an iBook that I had purchased in 2004, an iBook G4, when I purchased my new MBP in 2007 I sold my iBook to my dad and he used it till 2010. The iBook is still up and running, it is simply too slow for my dads needs so he bought a new MacBook Pro and absolutely loves it.
This is basically a longwinded way of saying that I disagree with your assessment that they are disposable machines. The amount of life and longevity in a Mac are to be envied, and the way they hold their value even after a couple of years is simply awesome.
Agreed -- I just sold my 2007 MBP and got enough back to buy a new iPad (retina version). That's more money than most brand new low-end Windows laptops go for (are there any non-low-end Windows laptops? I looked but couldn't find much from the major stores).
If you think about the original price that I paid (£1100) minus the sale price (£400), the total cost is really not that bad...
Looking into it further at the time there's actually a good chunk of your macbook that you can fix yourself it's just not officially blessed by Apple
I'm still typing on it today. But man, those new retina MacBooks are tempting.
Plus, unless you have an OS that can take advantage of it, higher resolution in a 11" ultrabook machine does not make sense.
What's gone wrong with them?
MBP - The case is full of dents, and the screen is starting to get dark. It's balls slow these days and Apple really doesn't want to support it anymore.
Netbook - it can't detect how much battery is left anymore, but otherwise seems fine. It's also balls slow, and there's not really a way to support it.
All that being said, replacing my netbook with something similarly priced will cost me $300-400 and get me a hell of a lot better piece of hardware. Replacing my MBP is going to cost me a pretty penny that I'm not looking forward to.
Note: I actually did "replace" my MBP with a Dell Studio a couple of years ago for about a thousand bucks and got a ridiculous amount of hardware for that price. It still looks almost new, but it "feels" cheap and fragile, even if it hasn't actually shown any wear and tear. My MBP on the other hand feels incredible, but has collected so many battle scars from fairly undramatic handling that I wonder if aluminum really is a good case material in the long run. The metal around one of the ports in the back is so buckled the port is no longer usable.
Note 2: It's interesting, being an East Coastie, that when I see MBPs it's usually young professionals at Starbucks or some such putting together business consulting slide decks or something. It's mildly unusual to see developer types out here with Macs (or see them with Macs not running Windows). I'm sure it's an effect of banking and government on the ecosystem. But it's almost always non-tech types using Macs here...usually as a response to having crappy corporate Windows XP/7 systems forced on them in their cubes at work.
Note 3: I'm not really a developer type, so personally I think Macs are "OK". I can see why West Coastie Web Startups use them. The Unixland is decent enough, the GUI is pretty good etc. For folks who want to do that kind of stuff the ecosystem is pretty nice.
For me, most of the stuff I want to do with a computer either isn't as good, doesn't exist, or is a second class citizen in the Mac world (it's mostly music composition, retrogaming, other entertainment) but is miles ahead in maturity and choices in the PC world. Portable software practices make lots of that go away when I'm stuck on my Mac and want to have some fun, but it still feels less mature than the Windows counterparts.
For business, almost none of my customers are using Macs, so I'm back into Windows land again.
It's frustrating, I'll sit down to really work with my Mac for a bit (and did for a few solid years), but find myself inevitably drawn back into Windows world to "just get shit done" in many cases.
Running Windows on an expensive MBP seems silly as the hardware seems to be about as durable, but the Windows machines are virtually disposable they're so cheap...and I couldn't care less about the feel of the machine.
I think changing work environments to a different kind of shop would probably offer me a better opportunity to stick with OS X, it's a kind of network effect.
But outside of some personal frustrations, I can see why either ecosystem would be a perfectly valid choice.
Why do I think I should buy Macbook Air? Because laptop should be that light and thin.
Why I use Linux? It's dead simple. A single command or a simple script can make system management and other tasks so straight forward and no brainier. I have total control on what I want on my system. Of course their is a learning curve but that's the main reason I visit HN.
http://www.engadget.com/tag/ultrabook/
And not just because of their advantage in hardware; Windows is notoriously hard to program for in a resolution independent way, and the first double resolution laptop displays are going to cause early adopters no end of pain. Even if Windows 8 brings APIs to fix it, the long tail of apps are not going to be updated any time soon.
I expect this to be an unusually large and concrete reason for everyday people to choose a Mac laptop for the next few years. Side by side, Macs will look amazing. Looked at a 3GS recently? Eww.
Of course, this is assuming OS X has resolution independence nailed; though I'd be amazed if they shipped this if that wasn't the case.
(This is a repost of my comment from a rumor thread; not much has changed)
Really? Using which API?
My point is that the long tail of apps in the wild are going to be problematic, regardless of what new apps do.
That said, it was all purely visual stuff, and the errors were more subtle than I was expecting, so maybe my prediction was a little strong. Though if you track off the beaten path, I'm sure it gets worse - that VB6 App you use to track warehouse supplies may be completely broken.
I tried whatever I use day to day:
Opera, Firefox, Skype, MSN, FlashDevelop, Unity, VLC, UltraEdit, Dropbox, MonoDevelop, TPCView, SmartDefrag
In contrast, with this announcement, I've probably bought my last Apple product.
I guess we'll have to see how that works out.
I'm guessing a reason we haven't seen high DPI screens from Dell/HP/Sony/etc is partially because the Windows OS doesn't really support it that well just yet. Hopefully things have changed in Windows 8.
Hopefully the Linux devs will start taking this into consideration.
Full screen apps with the magic pad swipe between them mitigates this somewhat for apps like Mail, Sublime Text, or Terminal, but 1440 x 900 is a poor choice for dual page word processing.
That said, after development, my second most common activity is photo triage and editing. For this, the 15" retina display could present a far truer representation of what can be expected in the final print.
But I'm concerned about the "less glare" feature. I've also always and only purchased the matte screens. They have no glare, and no false brilliance from the glossy screen. For photo editing for print work, the matte screens have always felt more accurate. I'm curious if they've gone to a single screen surface, based on glossy, but with somewhat less glare. I'm not sure I'd be interested in that.
On the plus side, a MBP 17" only fits in carry on bags that can't quite go in a commuter jet's overhead bin, while the 15" will fit easily in most any commuter jet compatible bag.
That said, the iPad 3 64GB with iPhoto and SnapSeed can ingest and edit a great deal of photos even at today's DSLR resolutions. On recent trips, I carry an iPad 3 plus a Nextodi external portable photo HDD with integrated card reader. I edit one day's worth of photos on the iPad, while archiving the full memory cards on the Nextodi.
(Example: http://www.phillips-safety.com/store/product_info.php?cPath=...)
I think you've confused "resolution" with "my preferred resolution". The new MBP has both a higher density and a better resolution then what you're looking for. You may be disappointed but I bet Apple thinks it can make more money by selling 2880x1800 MBPs.
You can imagine an alternative scenario to this in which everything on the screen is half as big as it used to be yet equally detailed, with four times as many icons fitting on the home screen as before. This is what it would be like if the full resolution of the retina display were utilized just to provide more real estate instead of more detail.
"Supported resolutions: 2880 by 1800 pixels (Retina); scaled resolutions: 1920 by 1200, 1680 by 1050, 1280 by 800, and 1024 by 640 pixels"
This is odd.
when using linux or windows on it you will get full resolution,
osx will be a blend, icons such as close/minimise... will be scaled up but the actual content will be crazy rez..
just wait until it comes out before you say it is only 1440x900 which it is NOT.
I.e., the approach they've taken is fully scaleable from current resolutions to high resolutions, but it'll take some cooperation from third-party software.
In the end, you'll be better off.
It looks and I would guess it would be magsafe 1 compatible. Maybe it has extra features or power to it. Pretty much any MB* can be charged on any power adapter albeit slower (or not at all if heavily using it).
So what you're saying is carriers are not "technically" prepared to handle it? I wonder if 4g has any new technologies to handle making more efficient use of resources?
From my understanding of LTE, there's a lot of cool things being prepared in the specifications for 4G that make this scenario less burdensome. For instance femtocells are likely to become more common. I personally know of a specific carrier that's working on a technology so you can share resources between two sectors. OFDM in particular is good for minimizing interference which should allow networks to become more dense, I believe as technology evolves there's a lot of benefits to even the carriers to allow users to use 4G from their laptop.
No. I said what I meant; it's not a technology problem. Demand exceeding capacity in the short-term is a capital/resource allocation problem.
Capacity isn't constrained by a need for new specs or new hardware. It's constrained by most of the cell towers only having <50mbps backhaul for 3G. New towers need new radios, new equipment to drive it, and new backhaul to provide enough bandwidth to share among the connections. It takes a lot of time and money to upgrade and build out the network.
The carriers are carefully managing demand through pricing and service limitations so that it doesn't outstrip the rate at which they make those upgrades.
In the meantime I got myself this[1] and can highly recommend it. No more fiddling with USB-dongles, you can just leave it in the bag and a single button press gives you a Wifi->3G bridge (for up to 5 clients).
[1] http://www.amazon.com/UNLOCKED-HUAWEI-HSDPA-MOBILE-Velvet/dp...
Lack of gigabit Ethernet on the big pro air makes me sad, though.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD463ZM/A?fnode=MTY1NDA3Ng
Presumably the logic is that its all wifi these days anyway.
Kind of silly given that the new Macbook Pro Air HD Super 15 has a better display than anything else I own, so I'm not going to necessarily want to put a 1920x1200 24" or even 2560x1600 30" in the center of my desk with it -- I'd treat the laptop display as primary, on a stand, with a keyboard. But Apple doesn't make a docking solution, and the Belkin/Matrox docks have been vaporware for over a year.
Keys/wallet/etc. remain in pockets when not in use, though -- so they're a LOT less likely to be abandoned than something which is small, connected to another long cable, etc.
Their thunderbolt ethernet adapter is $30: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD463ZM/A
Even when setting up hotdesks for guests, it's unclear if you could put just a TB display in them -- enough people will have non-TB macs, or non-macs, to require something else. Maybe you could have some percentage TB display, but a good third-party dock + a display which can take multiple inputs (DVI, HDMI, MDP via adapter, TB to adapter to monitor) seems like a better choice. Uglier, yes.
For personal/home use in a dark room with only 2011+ macs, and if you have a spare 15" for other temporary use, then sure, it's a good option.
But if you're going to do that, just sell your existing Air and buy a new one..
Anyone who would know (an Apple employee) isn't going to comment publicly today.
EDIT: "Up to two external displays" (thanks dsirijus)
With USB3 now, you could probably run several. I bet you could get 4 HD monitors easy.
http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/
Even with just Visual Studio and normal office usage, I found it very frustrating using a 1080p screen over USB. Very choppy and annoying.
This combined with on-board RAM and on-board SSD storage... are any of the components in these new retina display MacBook Pros replaceable?
I hate the glossy screen and was happy to pay extra for matte on my current MacBook.