
After Apple's Disappointing MacBook Pro Refresh, What's an Engineer to Do? - gregleffler
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/after-apples-disappointing-macbook-pro-refresh-whats-engineer-greg?trk=hn
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gandolfinmyhead
Answer: Move on to other things

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neoncontrails
The Wikipedia article for OLEDs mentions significant longevity problems,
particularly at the blue end of the spectrum. Has Apple indicated anything
about the lifetime of the touch component?

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tluyben2
I moved from Apple a year ago; I moved to Thinkpad X220 running Ubuntu with
i3wm. Secondhand laptops with excellent keyboards, very cheap, fast enough to
do most things, extendable (inc swappable batteries), very long battery life
(I routinely get 15+ hrs). Unless I get into AAA game dev I do not need
anything else for many years to come...

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Axsuul
First impression is that this guy doesn't do serious development when the only
three application he needs are Chrome, Terminal, and Sublime Text. The one
major advantage that macOS has over Windows is the Unix environment. So that
means all command-line development tools just work. And not to mention that
there's a lot of pretty development tools with a GUI that's been built for
macOS.

In Windows, you could replicate this with a virtual machine. Furthermore, you
most likely don't want to be running your application code in Windows anyways.
The best practice is to develop in as close to an environment as possible to
what you will be using in production. However, with the proliferation of
Docker, it's becoming less and less dependent on what your host OS is going to
be. Still, it's just more convenient to have a Unix environment.

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solipsism
_First impression is that this guy doesn 't do serious development when the
only three application he needs are Chrome, Terminal, and Sublime Text._

You know what they say... First impressions are dumb and wrong. Oh wait, they
don't say that. But they should because in this case they'd be right.

Our forefathers and foremothers did everything from dumb terminals. They did
serious things.

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riskable
Honestly, just get a nice Linux laptop from one of several vendors. Laptops
with Linux preinstalled don't suffer from the typical issues that users often
complain about when switching from Windows. They also have the added benefit
of running Linux...

Don't like the desktop environment? Change it.

Want more than four virtual desktops? Add more.

Want/don't want fancy 3D desktop effects? Turn them on/off.

You also don't have to reboot constantly to apply updates and there's
literally thousands and thousands of self-updating packages you can install in
seconds without having to "search the internet." And they're not just limited
to "apps."

Even better: If you're developing software to run on Linux servers you can
test your code locally without having to upload it anywhere and you don't have
to worry about zillions of platform gotchas.

Lastly, with Linux you get access to all sorts of neat things natively that
you just don't get to fool around with in other OSes like cool filesystems,
virtualization tricks, networking features up the wazoo, low level access to
hardware (many motherboards have GPIO pins you can fiddle with natively!), and
lots of other "fun" stuff (well, I have fun playing around with the new toys
that are regularly introduced :).

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Gnewt
I used to be fond of trying out new desktop environments, playing with "fun"
stuff etc. At this point in my life I no longer gain a lot of enjoyment from
just fiddling around (at least not usually). These days a laptop is just a
tool -- and ideally, one that works efficiently so I can do the work I need to
do and get on with my life.

The reason I've used a MacBook Pro for so many years is because it really does
"just work," or at least consistently has in the past. It's very, very rare
(in my personal experience) to run into any system-related issues. I used to
run Linux on a laptop and spent ages fiddling around with my Xorg,
troubleshooting wireless issues, dealing with buggy desktop environments,
etc...

I think a lot of other people are in a similar position, in that the "neat
things" and "fiddling" are a negative. I just want a machine that works well
with minimal configuration. Is desktop Linux at that stage right now? Popular
opinion seems to say no, but I haven't actually tried running desktop Linux
since for years.

(I do use Linux every single day, but it's always over ssh/tmux)

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marktangotango
I'm with you, I just want to get work done, I don't customize anything, the
last thing I want to do is waste time configuring every machine I use (i.e.
work provided machine and personal dev machines). Since I usually work in big
dumb corps I use Cygwin on Windows (it has been really good for a few years
now). I've been using Ubuntu for personal use since 2008. Desktop Linux has
been good enough for a long time in imo. With caveats that you should research
your hardware before you buy.

Nowadays a lot stuff just works, like tonight I just connected a bluetooth key
board to my dechromed acer c720 running xubuntu 14.04. It paired and
everything worked first time. Even reconnected after restart. I even exclaimed
to my wife how surprised I was. Dechroming and getting xubuntu on there was a
bit of work, but the guides online were good enough. Ymmv of course.

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developer2
>> PuTTY is a fine terminal emulator

I hear this a lot, and it's quite sad. PuTTY is not a great terminal
application. It just happens to be the only usable SSH client on Windows, and
so everyone uses it because they have little choice in the matter. Connection
management and copy/paste is such a pain. Microsoft's release of PowerShell as
an attempt to improve upon cmd.exe was an enormous failure.

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pjob
I highly recommend you try out cmder. It's a bundle of the excellent conemu
console emulator, clink for bash style completion in cmd.exe, and some unix
tools.

[http://cmder.net/](http://cmder.net/)

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jdpedrie
Can anyone comment on how effective WSL is for normal web developer tasks in
Windows? I'm a longtime Mac user who is really disappointed in the latest
Macbook Pro. At this point my decision is essentially a coin flip between a
2015 Macbook Pro and a Razor Blade.

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eridius
You're a web developer, right? Why are you disappointed in the MBP? It's not
like web development needs more than 16GB of RAM, or the absolute latest GPU.

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anthonybullard
I'm a web developer / front-end engineer, and I work on a 2014 MBP with 16GB.
It can slog. With multiple Chrome instances running, Atom with 12-15 documents
open, sometimes IntelliJ looking at BE code, and our dev server(running on the
JVM), Slack, and sometimes Sketch(and/or gimp). If you are just a "coder" that
designs static sites or edit a WordPress theme, maybe that works for you.

But my company is right now looking for a upgrade path out of MBP.

No 32GB option, no Kaby Lake, substandard GPU, AND $500 more? No thanks. We
have about 15 machines that were locked into auto purchase for Mac, but now we
want to move not only the Eng/Data Science teams away from Mac, but our entire
company(through Linux and ChromeOS most likely). Our ~60 person company's IT
budget won't cause any pain for Apple, but I wonder how many other similar
teams will consider a similar path forward.

