
Realistic alternatives to Apple computers - josephscott
http://www.onebigfluke.com/2016/10/alternatives-to-apple-computers.html
======
cseelus
I don't get the amount of grudge towards Apple for the new MBPs. Yeah, they
could support 32GB of Ram, more battery would be nice too, and yeah I think
almost no one got overwhelmed by he innovation Apple brought to the table with
them, but what are the alternatives?

The author mentions in another post why he is done with Apple after his 2013
13" MBP and states he has no use for the Touch Bar. Thats fine, just get the
Pro without the bar and with physical function keys.

The build quality of other laptops just isn't on par with Apples. Greg Koenig
and many others have analyzed why Apple has a tremendous edge over other
vendors when it comes to building computers and gadgets from aluminum[1].

Also if your are used to macOS, its perfect integration of hardware and
software, its polish and many of the very nicely crafted ("made with ︎love")
3rd party applications, it might be very hard to switch to a decent Linux
distro, let alone Windows.

It may be wise to first try the switch on your current Mac, inside a Virtual
Machine …

[1] [http://atomicdelights.com/blog/why-your-next-iphone-wont-
be-...](http://atomicdelights.com/blog/why-your-next-iphone-wont-be-ceramic)
(Featured on HN ~ 2 weeks ago)

~~~
jwr
For me the issue is with ports. I have exactly zero devices that I can plug
into the new fancy USB ports. None of my monitors will connect. I know, they
are better, yadda yadda, but I am tired of being held hostage until the
"industry" understands how the new ports are better.

Right now I use a MacBook Pro to do my work ("pro", remember?). I need a
faster machine, so I will have to upgrade. And I will have to deal with all
the dongles, carrying them, remembering about them, losing them, etc. I expect
I will eventually make an idiot of myself in front of a client, once they hand
me a flash drive with their data and I'll have to admit red-faced that I
forgot the dongle thingy.

MacBook Pro used to have the "pro" philosophy: stick every port in there, so
that the only thing you have to carry is your macbook and you're ready for
everything. Then it started: ethernet disappeared, DVI went away, and
successively all ports went away until now we are stuck with 4 ports of the
same kind, that are useless (but hey, they show great promise!).

I don't want a thinner machine. I don't need a lighter machine. I need a
machine so that I can do my work. Pro, remember?

Price is largely not an issue if you actually use it for work, so I have no
complaints there.

~~~
NEDM64
In sum, you want to sacrifice choice with convenience.

USB-C works with all the monitor you have and also with all the monitors
you'll have.

You can use any port on the laptop and crucially charge the laptop and connect
to a display with the same cable, and can be even used to connect to other
peripherals using the same cable.

Your argument is that you don't want to spend $10 in adapters, you'll end up
spending more in the future and be limited in terms of compatibility with
newer hardware.

"Stick every Port in it" is ridiculous also.

What laptop does have Ethernet, infiniband, USB-A/B/C, thunderbolt 2.0,
miniDisplayPort, MiniUSB, MicroUSB, RS232, Centronics, PS/2, VGA, EGA, PCMCIA,
SCSI, eSATA, S-video, etc?

~~~
khedoros1
> What laptop does have Ethernet, infiniband, USB-A/B/C, thunderbolt 2.0,
> miniDisplayPort, MiniUSB, MicroUSB, RS232, Centronics, PS/2, VGA, EGA,
> PCMCIA, SCSI, eSATA, S-video, etc?

Yes, "every" port is ridiculous. In particular, I think most people would
happily do away with anything that hasn't been in wide use in new hardware
over the last decade.

I like machines with a port for wired network, a port or two for wired video,
an SD slot, and 3-4 USB ports in a mix of USB-A and USB-C. For a Mac, I'd
argue that some Thunderbolt ports would make good sense, too. I'd rather have
my laptop be a self-contained system than have my bag filled with the half-
dozen converter dongles that I'd need to provide the connectivity that I use
with my current machine.

~~~
NEDM64
You like that, and people like other things.

I hate on board ethernet, it's stupid, almost all of them have only one NIC
and only 1Gbps, which is laughable in this day, much more in the 4 or 5 years
a laptop usually lasts.

So... welcome TB 3.0 (which can be used for 40Gbps daisy chain networking),
and 10GbE adapters someday or another.

~~~
brokenmachine
_> almost all of them have only one NIC_

Why would you need more than one NIC on a laptop?

Ethernet is ubiquitous in corporate. I'm yet to see an office with Thunderbird
ports.

~~~
NEDM64
"Thunderbird"...

~~~
brokenmachine
Haha I didn't even realize I did that. :-)

------
cstejerean
I feel like I'm missing something. If you don't need MagSafe, USB-A or SD card
slots and all you want is Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C including for charging, then
what's wrong with the MacBook Pro?

~~~
smoser
The problem is that I can't buy anything from Apple that connects directly to
it that isn't a dongle.

~~~
LaSombra
You can plug the Google Pixel or the latest Samsung phones, for example.

The irony :-)

~~~
NEDM64
The USB-C phone from Samsung got recalled because exploding.

------
msane
I looked at PC laptops recently for a linux project machine. You're going to
be very disappointed in the build quality if you're coming from Apple. They
are just-OK, and every little detail is worse.

~~~
rco8786
This is the biggest thing that keeps me from switching. I'd happily swap to
some other brand and run Linux, but every time I touch a non-Apple laptop it
feels cheap, loose, clunky, plasticy, and just...bad.

~~~
adamweld
The Chromebook Pixel is the only laptop I've had that matches Apple build
quality. It can also run Linux and ChromeOS synchronously on the same kernel,
which leads to a really great user experience.

The Surface Book I'm on now is very close, but the trackpad isn't quite as
good. The Pixel trackpad was, honest to god, better than on a MacBook pro.

~~~
nazka
Did you try the Dell XPS 13?

~~~
modzu
i wanted to love the XPS sooo much. they have a great linux team and it's damn
near perfect were it not for two glaring flaws (imo):

1 - the webcam. what the hell? it's on the bottom right of the screen. if you
videoconference often this will drive you insane -- the angle is so bad it
borders on being useless

2 - the trackpad. (obv nothing matches apple here), but the xps in particular
sucks (and oddly is not mentioned in any reviews i saw). for programmers,
having the cursor randomly move while typing is just not acceptable.. from
what I read the hardware was picking up noise from somewhere else in the
system, causing jumps in the cursor. the latest drivers filter this noise in
software, but this lead to increased latency. end result is weak. sold the
machine :(

~~~
dmux
The webcam location is ridiculous. I had a coworker who had an XPS and
whenever we were video conferencing he had to avoid all typing as his hands
would occult his face.

------
willcodeforfoo
Hardware aside, does anyone who was used to OS X and its app ecosystem's
polish really find Linux or Windows that much better? I'd miss Photoshop,
Lightroom, Sequel Pro, iTerm 2, Homebrew, Sketch, Transmit, Alfred, Reeder,
Keynote, Airmail, Spotify... just to name a few.

Not to mention every other OS I've used has varying HiDPI support and
typography really looks best on OS X.

I wonder if some design-minded Linux geeks will rally around making Linux on
the desktop a polished enough experience to rival OS X?

~~~
msbarnett
I used a Linux desktop (Ubuntu, specifically) for a few months at work this
year, but ended up switching back to OS X. The number of basic, table-stakes
stuff that was still utterly broken in day-to-day usage was astounding.

(Since someone will inevitably ask, because they personally _never_ have any
issues: off the top of my head: the barely-adequate Alfred replacement forgot
its keybinding on the daily. Unity's hotcorners would stop working randomly
until I cleared and reset them in the prefs. Mouse acceleration was a disaster
on my bluetooth trackpad so I wrote a bunch of calls to the synaptics command
line util to reset it to something close to reasonable -- but it would
randomly reset and I'd have to re-run the script. HiDPI support is a random
mess of things working well or appallingly depending on author, toolkit, time
of day, and orientation of the sun. The typography situation is awful -- every
third person will point you at a different guide to "fixing" it, but they just
result in different kinds of awful. The GUI would hard-lock occasionally and
no amount of keyboard poking would get me to a TTY I could reboot from --
seemed to be something Systemd was doing. Getting simple system logs is
cryptic bullshit thanks to Systemd's binary mess now, naturally. Etc, etc. I
could go on for days.)

~~~
vladimir-y
> Systemd's binary mess now

On the contrary, Systemd has brought a standard, a replacement for messy
scripts and logs used before.

Ubuntu is not a best choice despite of the popularity, I'd recommend Manjaro
(XFCE edition since it's simpler - so not a lot of things can be broken, not
the Gnome/KDE version), or Debian stable if you need stable system. Gnome
itself is shitty thing in my opinion, KDE is too complex, XFCE is nice.

~~~
msbarnett
> Ubuntu is not a best choice despite of the popularity, I'd recommend Manjaro
> (XFCE edition since it's simpler - so not a lot of things can be broken, not
> the Gnome/KDE version), or Debian stable if you need stable system.

Listen: I learned unix by installing MkLinux on a PowerMac G3 (the beige kind
that came with MacOS, the single-tasking cooperative OS from the '80s) in
1997. I built my first PC in '99 or '00 and ran Debian on it until the old
glibc transition broke so much that I switched to Gentoo, and much later to
slack & arch.

I've done the distro-shuffle. There is no magical Happy distro where
everything finally Works. Everything is constantly being rewritten, and some
percentage of it is egregiously, embarrassingly broken at the user-facing
level.

In some ways it's even worse now than it was in the early 2000s. So after
nearly 20 years of "you shouldn't have used distro X you should use distro Y",
I think I'll pass.

And despite this rant in 3 years I'll probably be dumb enough to think "well
maybe this time things are finally working well", yet again.

~~~
brokenmachine
I run ubuntu on a server at home. Every time I did a distro upgrade, it broke
so much stuff (Nvidia drivers/mythtv/random other stuff) that I would have to
fix, that I ended up not upgrading it from 12.04 until just a few weeks ago.

I decided to blow everything away and do a fresh install of 16.04. I wanted to
have both Gnome and KDE on it, so I could have the choice of window managers.
You're meant to be able to do that.

So I put a fresh ubuntu on it, and then the first thing I did was try to
install kde. The kubuntu-desktop package install stopped halfway because of
conflicts between Gnome and KDE packages, with just a cryptic error message
about a background process having an error during package installation!

The failed install broke (both) GUI's and the apt package manager completely.
KDE wouldn't launch at all and Gnome would come up with a blank screen and a
mouse cursor and nothing else.

It took hours of googling to find the magic commands to actually remove the
conflicting Gnome packages to get the KDE install to continue, and any GUI
working. I have it working with just KDE now, but could never get it working
with both.

A fresh install of the latest "long term support" version of the most popular
distro, then I tried to install the second most popular window manager, and
that didn't work. What a massive fail.

I actually love using Linux, and it's so refreshing to not be tied to
corporate garbage on your PC, but unfortunately, Ubuntu/linux is 100% not
ready for normal consumers. I really really hope it improves, but it always
seems to be two steps forward, one step back. It's a bit sad.

------
dmayle
I've been doing very similar research, but with slightly different
constraints, so for those who might be looking for a more powerful laptop:

* 15 inch screen, preferably hidpi

* ability to power two external 4k@60 displays

* 64GB of RAM

* M.2 NVMe SSD (preferably Samsung SM961 / 960 Pro)

* quad core (this trumps kaby lake vs skylake)

* touch screen

Other than that, I tend to agree with the opinions expressed in the article.

I have found four possibilities:

* Dell Precision 7510 paired with TB15 thunderbolt dock (no touch screen)

* Lenovo Thinkpad P50 (People seem to have troubles getting 2 external screens at 4k@60, no touch)

* Falcon Northwest TLX / System76 Oryx Pro / Clevo (1080p no touch, bad battery, but has GTX 1070, more USB-C ports)

There is one more possible contender, which is the as yet unreleased kaby lake
XPS 15. Given the XPS 13 refresh, I suspect we'll see the new XPS 15 in the
December / January time frame. If I knew for certain that it would support
64GB of RAM, I would wait and get that machine, but at this point I'm leaning
towards buying the Precision 7510 in the next week or two.

~~~
vladimir-y
> I have found four possibilities:

Such heavy laptops can not be considered as an alternative for Macbooks.

~~~
jacquesc
That assumes everyone cares about weight / thinness over of system
performance. Apple no longer gives users an option to choice their preference.

~~~
vladimir-y
It's very easy to find a decently made heavy laptop (jut get any Dell/HP
workstation, or gaming Alienware/etc), much harder to find a portable decent
laptop. The main laptop's feature is its portability, else is secondary.

~~~
sverige
So a half inch thinner and a pound or two in weight is the main consideration?
I have yet to find any laptop that isn't portable by definition. I have an old
ThinkPad that I use sometimes for OpenBSD, and I find it to be very portable.

------
davidw
I've been happily running Dell computers for years. They're not perfect, but
I've been using Linux for 20 years, and am not about to switch to Apple. I'm
too attached to the freedom Linux gives me, and am mostly satisfied with Dells
that run Linux as something that just works out of the box.

~~~
antirez
Hey David, I'm curious about how frequently you upgraded in recent times.
Thanks.

~~~
davidw
I have an XPS 13 at home from several revisions back, and at work I have
another XPS 13 that is current_revision - 1. In Padova, we had an Inspiron
from ~10 years ago that had been turned into a computer for the kids to use,
and was still working well. My wife is using another Dell Latitude laptop I
got a while back, before the XPS 13. All with Ubuntu. It's probably time to
upgrade my wife's computer, but the others are all working great.

I've continued to update Ubuntu on all of them without reinstalling.

~~~
antirez
Thank you, from your account it looks like this hardware is lasting at least
as much as Apple hardware. Recently I had 3 Macbook Air laptops failing in a
row... with things that are not easy to fix like motherboard, charging
circuit, and so forth. After 2 years the warranty is gone so all they said
was, we can change this for a new one for <unreasonable-amount-of-money>. All
in all the switch back to Linux looks very interesting.

~~~
davidw
The thing that most impressed me is when the hard drive failed in the Inspiron
when we were living in Austria. I had purchased the computer here in Oregon
and brought it over there. I called up the local Dell number, expecting to
have some huge hassle where I'd ship the computer to the US or something and
wait a month for it to work its way through the system.

Instead, a guy showed up at our door the next day with a new drive that he
installed.

It was definitely within the warranty period, but I was really impressed.

They're not perfect computers, and I do tend to be pretty careful with them,
but so far so good.

~~~
antirez
Austria effect, everything is efficient there :-)

~~~
yannovitch
Completely off topic, but I follow your blog about redis for quite some
time,and thanks to HN, I just discovered that you're from ~Catania, I was
there few months ago and I plan to come back, when I do I would absolutely
love to pay you a beer (or a coffee if you prefer that :))

~~~
antirez
Hello! Sure, please send me an email at antirez/gmail, only condition is that
I pay :-) Cheers. Trivia: I'm not actually from Catania but from a different
place in Sicily, (Campobello di Licata in the province of Agrigento). However
I live here in Catania for several years.

------
cobbzilla
Any developers out there that truly _love_ their Linux-based, non-Apple
laptop? If so, what's your make & model? What do you love about it?

~~~
wyldfire
Dell XPS13 9343. I love that it's super light, long battery life, high res
screen, adequate performance. I use Ubuntu 16.04. I usually use chrome with a
gazillion tabs open at any time + gnome-terminal running python or C/C++
compiles. Suspend/resume works very well.

Caveat: eventually I tired of the occasional wifi problems and I replaced the
broadcom wifi module with an intel one (~$25). Flawless wifi since.

I think my only regret/disappointment would be the memory -- this one is
limited to 4GB and I can't upgrade it.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
I wish you could get the hi-res display as a non-touch screen; unless that's
an option, my personal search for a MBP replacement will continue.

~~~
linkregister
Why not just not touch it?

What I'm actually saying is I don't know what is wrong with a touch screen.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
It's a fair enough response, sure. My reasoning:

a) I'd be paying more for a touch screen that I don't want. Whatever the cost,
I'd rather have the money

b) Does whatever OS I'm running know I've got a touch screen? What's to stop
it taking advantage of that? What's to stop it essentially requiring I use it?

c) Even if I don't use it, buying a laptop with a touchscreen suggests there's
a market for such a device. I'd rather not add the weight of my support.

------
gchokov
That post makes me want a MacBook. They all look cheap with so much plastic.
Aluminum unibody in my 2012 rMBP is great, and it absorbed a drop by quite
well, although with visible damage.

~~~
mmphosis
I was disappointed with the new MacBook announcement, but also disappointed
when looking at alternatives. I am looking for 32G RAM. I liked the author's
short descriptions of the various Intel product lines.

~~~
gchokov
There're rumors from KGI analysts, that early 2017 will give us 32GB and
upgraded hardware. I'd hold my horses until then.

------
mixmastamyk
I've been eyeing the XPS 13/15 and took them for a spin at recently an MS
store, though I'd get the dev/Linux version. Some things the reviews never
seem to mention:

Nice screen, but it is quite glossy which sucks at my place with lots of
windows. There is a matte option, but only with the low resolution screen. Not
sure why a developer would ever want to use a glossy screen on ultra portable.
Perhaps if you travel from dungeon to dungeon.

Second, the super thin keyboards in rage now have very little key travel. The
XPS is better than the small macbook, but much worse than last years Pro. It
is also a lot worse feeling than my old XPS. It makes a clanking sound when
you use it. I was able to avoid that by touching very lightly, so partly my
own fault but touching so lightly is less satisfying on some level. Perhaps
the new Pro has a better keyboard but the Apple store did not have it in stock
yet.

------
foob
If you're considering upgrading then you might want to ask yourself whether
you really need a laptop instead of a desktop. If you work from home and
currently have a laptop that you can use while traveling (or for miscellaneous
web browsing, media, etc) then a desktop might actually be a better fit.

I recently started feeling like it might be time to upgrade my 1st gen Carbon
X1 and after doing some research I found myself really disappointed by how
little the laptop landscape has changed over the last four or five years.
After giving it some thought though, I realized that I do virtually all of my
work at one desk anyway and decided to look into some desktop options. I found
that you can put together something in a mini-case with an i7 processor, 64 GB
of DDR4 RAM, 2 TB of SSD, a 28" 4k monitor, a mechanical keyboard, and a high
quality mouse for less than about $2k dollars.

This made a lot more sense to me than spending a similar amount on a laptop
that offers only marginal improvements over my current one. The obvious trade-
off is portability but I would guess that most of us here already have laptops
that are "good enough" for most purposes and which could still be used as
necessary.

------
igor_filippov
I get that different people have different needs, and someone might say
there's a need for 64 Gb RAM laptop. But it's not fair to say that MacBooks
are not for developers anymore. I'm really happy with 16 Gb RAM on my MBP,
which allows me to run Android Studio, XCode, Rails server, Redis Server,
PostgreSQL and dozens of other small things at the same time. I don't see a
reason for such reactions.

~~~
phaed
It depends on what you do, if you have to juggle multiple VMs or deal with
massive projects 16GB will be an issue for you. If you are a creative that
works with graphics/video/music, your work machine will most definitely
require tons of RAM, and that limit will def become an issue.

------
gcb0
external displays are 80% hdmi and 20% vga. for the next five years there will
be zero dongles available to you at universities.

yes, they are available chained to your employer and mine conference rooms,
but that's not the norm when you actually need to project something and forgot
your dongle.

I will happily give up the 0.0001mm it will gain to have both of those. my
Asus has only a raised connector and is the same thinness of the models
without.

irrelevant thickness > missing ports when you need them.

saying otherwise is buying into the thinest-is-better-marketing-pissing-
contest and show that you have no idea that support for both those ports are
already built into your APU. they just need to run a port with no extra parts.
they just leave it out to market it easier to people like you that will pay
premium for it.

------
giarc
Great write up, I like the simplicity and the common structure that allows for
easy comparison. Would be nice in a chart view, but oh well.

The issue I face is that I need XCode and therefore need an Apple product.
Currently using a mid 2010 MBP and was hoping for a good upgrade this round
but don't have $3000 to spend. So I'll likely be looking at the used market.

~~~
virmundi
Do you need a laptop? I know that I prefer a laptop, but I don't really need a
laptop.

Could you get a Mac desktop and remote into it? It might be cheaper and more
powerful even when including the cost of the other machine.

~~~
giarc
I was thinking about that actually. I like the portability of a laptop
(working on couch, at table, back deck etc). I think I need to test it out a
bit as my wife would also like a new laptop. Perhaps an iMac or mac mini in
the basement would work well. Is it preferrable to use an apple product to
remote into another apple product, or could I get a Windows/Chrome/Linux
laptop and still remote in?

------
chris_7
Why do people so deeply need to buy a new laptop, right now? My MacBook Pro
from a few years ago is still fine. It's in perfect condition. It's fast.

~~~
throwawayqq
I think a lot of people are thinking ahead, sparked by the circus that new
Apple announcements cause.

~~~
tortilla
Premature optimization? :)

------
iddqd
They all have one thing in common, i7-7500U or slower. That is because the
quad-core i7 7th gen processor won't be available until next year, and that's
probably the reason Apple stayed at the 6th gen for this refresh.

In my list of requirements quad-core is definitely prioritized over which gen
the processor is.

~~~
phaed
Processor benchmarks:

Intel Core i7-7500U @ 2.70GHz \- 5,337

Intel Core i7-6920HQ @ 2.90GHz \- 9,588

Intel Core i7-6820HQ @ 2.70GHz \- 8,697

Intel Core i7-6700HQ @ 2.60GHz \- 8,029

------
outworlder
The biggest downside for me of this Touch Bar gimmick is not that I have to
look at it. I can touch type, but I'd rather have this than a menu bar. You
have to look up to the menu bar anyway, and reach for the mouse. Noone is
complaining that menu bars are still there. This is like the Office "ribbon"
in hardware form. It's fine, stop whining.

The problem for me is that my laptop is usually in "clamshell" mode. If I'm at
the office, I have an external monitor. If I am at home, I have an external
monitor. So the touch bar would be used for Starbucks and Planes? Meh. If at
least the external Apple keyboards had it...

I too have been considering other alternatives. And that's mostly because I am
feeling fed up with having multiple machines. I want a machine with a decent
GPU, which you can't have in Apple land, no matter how much money you are
willing to throw at Apple.

They could have used those speedy thunderbolt connections to power external
GPUs, much like Razer and Dell are doing. Even Microsoft is kind of doing it,
with the GPU in the Surface Book's keyboard. If there's a company that knows
how to do this video card switching thing, it's Apple. I can never tell when
the MBP is changing GPUs.

The Surface Book not having Thunderbolt was a surprise to me. I guess that's
out then.

~~~
msbarnett
> The problem for me is that my laptop is usually in "clamshell" mode. If I'm
> at the office, I have an external monitor. If I am at home, I have an
> external monitor. So the touch bar would be used for Starbucks and Planes?

I'm sincerely curious (this isn't some veiled criticism or w/e): what do you
like about having it in clamshell mode with an external monitor? I use my MBP
with an external at work every day, but I always keep it open for the extra
screen.

~~~
outworlder
Usually, desk space.

At this very moment, I have 3 monitors in front of me (2 30", 1 27"). Space is
at a premium, I don't gain much with the laptop screen. In clamshell, I can
tuck it below the monitors.

Sometimes I will have the laptop open. But then the screen is not properly
positioned vs the other(s) monitor. And then I put it in a stand. Which means
I no longer have easy access to the keyboard.

This is why, in fact, I bought my first magic trackpad. I caught myself
reaching for the laptop's trackpad to use gestures or scroll.

Get me an external keyboard with a touch bar and I'm on board! I don't think
that's going to happen though, because right now it is what makes the MBPs
stand out.

~~~
msbarnett
Makes sense. I use a magic trackpad myself, for the same reasons.

Although I actually disagree -- I think a touchbar standalone keyboard is
inevitable. They want people writing touchbar-aware apps, and the only way
that's going to happen is to make the touchbar available to the broader
installed base. Whether or not it happens right away is going to come down to
how efficiently they can drive down the cost.

------
Throwaway07
If anyone needs Linux support, IMO the only horse in the race is Dell's
"developer" line:
[http://www.dell.com/developer](http://www.dell.com/developer)

A couple different Lenovo sales reps have told my team they won't support
Linux. We'd have to wipe back to Windows.

While it's been a few years, HP said effectively the same thing.

The Dell line has options for 4k, up to 64G RAM. 17" screen if you want to lug
around a cinder block (ok they're not that heavy).

Arch runs with minimal twiddling, like installing Broadcom drivers.

We're done fiddling with Linux on "Windows" laptops thanks to the Dell line.

------
flavor8
I recently got a new laptop to run Ubuntu on.

Initially I bought a Lenovo Yoga 900 - the hardware was great, but I ran into
the bios shenanigans which blew up on HN and Reddit a week or so after I'd
returned it. (They have since fixed it.)

I then bought a Dell Inspiron 13 7000 which is nice. Touch screen,
convertible, reasonable resolution, affordable. Ubuntu installed easily
(although I had to jump through minor hoops around UEFI) and everything has
worked flawlessly.

~~~
desireco42
Sorry for ignorant question, but is touch screen works on Ubuntu?

I've been eyeing jumping to linux, whether on a mac or some other laptop...

~~~
flavor8
Yeah, the touch screen works great (with multi touch in apps that support it,
e.g. chrome). The only thing that's not supported is auto inversion of the
screen when you fold it over 360 degrees to use it as a tablet. I set up a
shortcut key combination to do that, so it's not overly cumbersome.

------
Kenji
I am super happy with my Lenovo T450s - it's sturdy, has a super crisp,
beautiful IPS display, very long battery life, trackpoint. The only bad thing
about it is that the speakers point downwards into the table, but I rarely use
them anyway. I run dual-boot Windows 10 and Linux because I need both for my
work. The newer Linux kernels support everything and work perfectly with this
computer.

------
AceJohnny2
On the XPS 13: _Cons: Expensive. Unnecessary SD card slot_

I find this amusing and interesting. I've seen lots of complaining about the
MBP dropping SD card support ("photographers HATE it!"). It looks like
everyone rejects it for not-entirely overlapping reasons. Reminds me of
political candidates, where everyone has differing reasons to _not_ vote for
them.

------
doug1001
nice one--for the same reason, i'm doing the research and creating a list of
options just now. Myy requirements lists, at least for your first two sets of
bullets, are the same.

My leading contender at the moment is an Alienware 13, which is sold in three
different configurations from $1,000, $1,100, and $1,500. (note: i have no
affiliation with Alienware nor am i a gamer).

it's not ideal for my use cases (which are probably similar to most other
dev), eg, i don't need the industrial strength speakers, which is one of the
reasons the box depth is a little on thicker than most laptops to say the
least. After having a MBP for the past 7-8 years, an Alienware will feel
practically cuboid.

one additional criterion i have is high build quality which has led me to look
closely at ThinkPad and Alienware. I had an Alienware quite a few years ago
before the company was purchased by Dell; The build quality was superb; i have
no direct experience with the quality of the newer units (post-acquisition).

------
TheGorramBatman
I'm not convinced by his "need" to have Thunderbolt 3.

~~~
SloopJon
Yeah, the list of "must have" and "avoid" attributes made it clear that this
is not a list for me. I'll probably never use my laptop with an external GPU
that costs as much as the laptop itself. Maybe I'd feel differently if I used
a laptop exclusively.

------
michaelmior
I'm surprised that no System76 machines were even considered.

~~~
haarts
I'm surprised too. The Lemur (14") just got a CPU upgrade and looks enticing,
from a hardware perspective. It's serviceable and can sport 32GB RAM and two
disks. Unfortunately it's not a looker. But I'm getting fed up with my Dell
XPS 13. HiDPI support is still ... not good in Linux, especially when
attaching/detaching screens.

------
avisser
What's with the desire for a 4k laptop? The 5.1 megapixels on my 15" rMBP are
certainly more than I can see (36yo here). Especially as this guy is looking
for a 13" screen, and more pixels leads to less battery life, I don't see the
draw.

------
mparr4
Why avoid HDMI?

This is a sincere question.

~~~
jacek
I have no idea why more options for video output is a problem for the author.
I would see this as the advantage. Also "Unnecessary SD slot" is con for one
laptop. How is this a problem?

~~~
bslatkin
If I'm doing digital video work, then I'm already lugging around all the
camera gear. Having an SD card reader in the camera bag works for me. I'd
rather not have to carry around the slot otherwise.

------
mark_l_watson
Thanks, great writeup - I bookmarked it because my 5 1/2 year old MacBook Air
is literally wearing out. I really like Mac laptops but the closest match to
my needs now is a MackBook which is probably about as fast as my 5 1/2 year
old laptop. Our local non-official Mac store tech guy was telling me that the
MacBook is surprisingly fast and since he knows me and my habits (I tend to
develop on large memory, multi-core VPSs) he was recommending it highly to me.
Still, it seems expensive for what you get.

------
desireco42
Apparently Dell still has Ubuntu edition laptops. Based on Reddit comments,
they seem to be working really well. For 16Gb ram and this insane resultion,
seems great deal for $1800.

[http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=cax13u...](http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=cax13ubuntuh5133&model_id=xps-13-9360-laptop&c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04)

~~~
vladimir-y
You can get HP x360 with the same config for about $1300. And don't forget to
check laptop for coil whine (high pitch noise) issue buying Dell XPS laptops,
they still do ship laptops with that annoying problem.

~~~
igravious
There are two versions of the Dell XPS 13" variety. There is the 1080p version
and the QHD+ version. The 1080p version is non-touch, the higher res is touch
enabled. The 1080p version goes for €1,149.00 (with discounts)[1] from where
I'm at right now. I found a HP x360 priced at €1193.00 locally[2].
Interestingly from a developer perspective, the Dell XPS Developer edition
comes with Ubuntu 16.04 SP1 out of the box so no Apple or Microsoft or Google
tax. Isn't that neat? System76 is the only other well known system builder
that I know of that does this. I'm happy to be corrected on this.

Let's compare the HP Spectre x360 and the Dell XPS 9360.

    
    
       component   HP                                     Dell
       ---
       os          Windows 10 Home 64bit                  Ubuntu 16.04 SP1 64bit
       processor   6th gen i5-6200U (3MB cache, <2.8GHz)  7th Gen i5-7200U (3MB cache, <3.1GHz)
       memory      8GB LPDDR3 1600MHz                     8GB LPDDR3 1866MHz
       storage     256 GB PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 SSD             256GB PCIe SSD
       graphics    Intel® HD Graphics 520                 Intel® HD Graphics 620
       display     (13.3") FHD IPS LED-backlit            13.3” FHD AG (1920 x 1080) InfinityEdge display
                   touch screen (1920 x 1080)
       
       ports       1 headphone/microphone combo           1 Headset jack, 1 Noble lock slot
                   3 USB 3.0                              2 USB 3.0 - 1 w/PowerShare
                   1 HDMI, 1 Mini DisplayPort             1 Thunderbolt™ 3
       expansion   1 multi-format SD media card reader    1 SD card reader (SD, SDHC, SDXC)
    

So the big plus for HP is that it's a touch screen which opens up
possibilities for using it as a tablet which is a very convenient. The minus
is that it is Skylake instead of Kabylake and slower memory, last gen
integrated graphics, and no thunderbolt 3. A minus for the Dell is, like the
new Macbook Pros, that you'll need a dongle to connect to external displays.
(But at least you get an SD card reader and regular USB ports which Apple in
its infinite wisdom has deemed superfluous to basic requirements now!)

:)

[1]
[http://www.dell.com/ie/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd?oc=cnx93609&l...](http://www.dell.com/ie/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd?oc=cnx93609&l=en&s=dhs)

[2]
[http://www.elara.ie/productdetail.aspx?productcode=WCEW8Y31E...](http://www.elara.ie/productdetail.aspx?productcode=WCEW8Y31EAABU)

~~~
vladimir-y
> The minus is that it is Skylake

It's not Skylake based anymore, please take updated x360 for this comparison
[http://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-Spectre-x360-13-w023dx-
Conve...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-Spectre-x360-13-w023dx-Convertible-
Review.180538.0.html) (7th Gen CPU, became a little lighter/smaller than prev
generation, etc) It's convertible which is a good bonus.

Don't forget to take into the account Dell's XPS well known coil whine issue,
even latest generations still do have it [http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-
XPS-13-9360-QHD-i7-7500U-N...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-
XPS-13-9360-QHD-i7-7500U-Notebook-Review.181471.0.html)

> System76 is the only other well known system builder that I know of that
> does this.

System76 laptop doesn't have Thunderbolt 3 ports.

> Interestingly from a developer perspective, the Dell XPS Developer edition
> comes with Ubuntu 16.04 SP1 out of the box so no Apple or Microsoft or
> Google tax. Isn't that neat?

It's not a big deal to install Linux in your own, the distributive you need,
not the Ubuntu (Ubuntu is not the best choice for developers in my opinion).

So I really believe x360 is a better choice in all terms than XPS, I hope 15
inch model will also get update soon.

~~~
igravious
The Linux pre-install is a big deal. Dell _supports_ Linux on some
configurations meaning the hardware works (or should work) out of the box.
There have been issues which Dell resolves with bios updates. Linux is awesome
but it can still be a bit of a crap shoot if you don't do your homework. Dell
saves you that legwork.

You make your case well sir. :) I agree that the newly updated HP x360 you
point to is on a par with the Dell XPS in every way _plus_ it has a
convertible touchscreen. If you want touchscreen on the Dell XPS you have to
go to the QHD+ (3200 x 1800) model. And that's hundreds of extra $ or €.

If Linux works well with the latest HP x360 then I agree it seems like a
better value proposition than the Dell XPS. I'd be very tempted!

In the context of the article what is good though is that the Lenovo Yoga, HP
Spectre, MS Surface Pro/Book†, and Dell XPS all offer excellent chassis build
quality and I think they are genuine Macbook Pro competitors. We are spoilt
for choice a bit now.

† Not yet Thunderbolt 3 which will be a deal-breaker for most I suspect.

~~~
vladimir-y
> The Linux pre-install is a big deal

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12852468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12852468)

------
anotheryou
Any recommendations for <1200€, high dpi, matte, i7, 16gb ram, 15"?

I don't mind to carry a bit.

Best I could find so far:
[https://www.cyberport.de/?DEEP=1C10-2WN&APID=6](https://www.cyberport.de/?DEEP=1C10-2WN&APID=6)
(german, but I guess you can see the specs, goes under the brand name "Clevo"
elsewhere. would need to upgrade ram, but there is plenty of space I think)

------
AndrewNCarr
I would like to find a laptop with a touchpad as good as a 2010 MacBook Pro.

I'm not aware of any, and this article seems to confirm it:
[http://www.businessinsider.com/macbook-touchpad-better-
than-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/macbook-touchpad-better-than-
windows-10-touchpads-2015-8)

------
michaelmior
One of the things I have a hard time giving up when looking at alternative
laptops is the TrackPoint on my ThinkPad. I've grown to love it and I'm not a
fan of most trackpads (although I think Apple got it right with the MacBook).
That leaves the ThinkPad P50 as perhaps the only serious contender for me.

------
ape4
None of these have hardrives. Which is nice in a way. But the "disk" space on
all of them is pretty small.

------
ngcazz
If you're a musician, and you're tied to Core Audio, then it would appear
you're SOL...

------
vladimir-y
Article author forgot to mention Acer TravelMate P648
[http://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-
TravelMate-P648-M-757N-Not...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-
TravelMate-P648-M-757N-Notebook-Review.167637.0.html)

------
vladimir-y
Btw 13" MacBook Pro vs. HP Spectre x360 Late 2016 Comparison Smackdown
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNMrMoT5cb0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNMrMoT5cb0)

------
rufius
At least in my opinion, the ThinkPad Carbon X1 is glaringly missing in that
lineup.

~~~
whytaka
We really shouldn't support companies that so shamelessly spies on us.

~~~
aRationalMoose
You can always powerwash it and slap your favorite linux distro on it, no?

~~~
user982
Lenovo put a rootkit in its laptops' firmware that reinstalled across system
wipes, so no.

------
bel_marinaio
The biggest issue, and it is not even mentioned, is the OS.

The Apple computer experience is a lot more than just the hardware.

------
desireco42
Man Razer went long way, that laptop looks awesome. Definitely something to
distinguish you from others.

I am would have to research a lot if people got Ubuntu to work there well.
Last time I tried 2 yrs ago on my then old Macbook pro, took 2 days to
configure everything. Then battery life simply was not that good and I went
back to osx.

------
oDot
Anyone who needs a laptop right now and can wait for CES, should.

