
Ask HN: Disappointed by the new Macbook, what alternatives do we have? - Maran
I&#x27;ve been very happy with my 2012 Macbook Pro Retina and was looking forward to a worthy successor. However the unveiling of the new Macbook was a big letdown for me. Everything that made the Macbook &quot;Pro&quot; seems to be removed. Enough has been said about the topic already what I want to do here is look at what alternatives there are.<p>So my question for you is; Which laptops, around the price point of your average Macbook Pro, come close to the build quality of the Macbook and use hardware that&#x27;s greatly supported in Linux.<p>Extra kudos if somebody can recommend me a terminal on-par with iTerm. Out of all my apps I think I would miss iTerm the most.
======
eknkc
I asked the same question and read replies to others. Just a quick summary;

\- Lenovo has decent laptops. Personally, I'd not touch anything from Lenovo
after their shady stuff. (Maybe not an issue on Linux, maybe it is. I don't
trust them)

\- Dell XPS series are really good but people complain about coil whine, worse
battery life compared to MBP and hit/miss trackpad. It might not be that big
of a problem. And if you are running in clamshell mode, these are generally no
issues. I don't run clamshell though.

\- The Razer Blade stuff seems to be great too. They are mostly aimed for
gamers but look decent. Someone mentioned about huge display bezels being
really huge in person. Gotta see. I can't find any info about them here, maybe
they only sell in USA.

\- I skipped Asus due to past support experiences with them. Also some smaller
vendors due to possible support issues I'd have especially since I'm out of
US.

~~~
pritambaral
Important corrections:

\- Lenovo's _ThinkPad_ line has decent laptops. Lenovo's more popular line,
Ideapad, which are branded just "Lenovo", are terrible.

\- Dell XPS series are good, but if you're looking to run Linux on them, make
sure to get the Developer Editions

~~~
y7
Can you elaborate? Why are the Ideapads terrible? Why get a Developer Edition?

~~~
dom0
The IdeaPads I had were not of low quality. They are plastic through and
through, but high quality plastic. They feel reasonably solid and a reasonably
priced.

Obviously they are not carved from a solid block of magnesium alloy, like
ThinkPads used to be.

~~~
pritambaral
They do _feel_ solid. But the innards are not as good (e.g.: poor Broadcom Wi-
Fi cards, bad power management).

And the ThinkPad units didn't have Superfish or the Win10-only-SSD BIOS lock.

------
threeseed
Massive tip if you decide to stay with a < 2015 MacBook Pro.

Open up the laptop and reapply the thermal paste on the CPU with something
high quality like Arctic Silver. It really needs redoing after 1-2 years. This
will result in a significant improvement to overall performance. Why ? Because
when OSX detects that the laptop is overheating it schedules a dummy task e.g.
secd or kernel_task to throttle the CPU. Cool the laptop and the throttling
stops. Use iStat Menus or top to check for the process.

Takes all of 10 minutes and iFixit can guide you through it. As much of a
performance difference as going from HDD->SSD. The other most vital thing to
do on OSX since all of the daemons result in lots of random reads (check
fs_usage).

~~~
72deluxe
Is this specific to certain years only? I have a 2012 non-retina and it is
great, but apparently certain years had more problems than others. Would you
recommend it for my 2012 model too?

~~~
dom0
This is a general issue affecting lots of notebooks from all vendors.

~~~
threeseed
Sure. But what I haven't seen on Windows or Linux is the deliberate high
priority scheduling of a dummy process designed to throttle the CPU.

~~~
dom0
The CPU will throttle itself soon enough after that anyway. The only
difference would be that without the kernel throttling it earlier, it can get
a bit hotter and last a bit longer before throttling.

------
jaxondu
Opportunities:

\- A Thunderbolt 3 dock that has all the missing ports in new MacBook Pro

\- Lenovo, HP, Asus release properly supported notebook with Linux similar to
Dell XPS Developer edition. Makes desktop Linux available across PC
industries.

\- Microsoft release Surface Pro and Surface Book with Mubuntu (MS version of
Ubuntu, since MS already has working relationship with Canonical)

\- Cloud service via emulator that allows developer to build, test and submit
iOS apps without actually owning a Mac

\- Google release Pixel Book which runs a brand new OS that is
ChromeOS+Android hybrid.

We need:

\- Adobe releases Photoshop & Lightroom for Linux

\- Microsoft releases Office for Linux

\- A few major games for Linux. Makes Linux a game platform.

\- One or two major Mac developers develop for Linux

\- More developer using Electron and React Native for Ubuntu

But we will be back to the same by spring 2017 when Apple refreshes MacBook
Pro with new CPU and cheaper price.

~~~
sbalea
Thunderbolt 3 dock coming soon:
[http://www.belkin.com/us/p/P-F4U095/](http://www.belkin.com/us/p/P-F4U095/)

~~~
balac
That is actually pretty neat, I've been wanting a macbook dock for ages and
this is almost that...

------
Philipp__
No terminal is on par with iTerm. I was using Linux and *BSD for years, used
many terminals, and of all iTerm is bread and butter (and with that font
rendering and retina screen, nothing comes close). I would recommend to
evaluate your needs, but be objective! If you can live with 16GB of RAM (I
can, I do not do anything that would require me to use 32GB of RAM) then buy
last year model. I have it, amazing machine.

And maybe it would be better to hold on to your MBP, and buy Chromebook, at
least to test the water with Linux (or whatever OS you want to use). Install
them on small machine, setup few essential programs to you and use them for
few weeks. Why am I telling you this? Well I really appreciate some things on
macOS, which will keep me glued to it for few more years at least. (iTerm is
one of those things)

~~~
acchow
I use iTerm daily but I don't think I get it. What makes iTerm so great?

~~~
Philipp__
After I used many of dated terminals, everything from xterm to urxvt (was ok),
to more modern ones like termite (this one I liked very minimal), I really
appreciated everything about iTerm. The amount of GUI customization is insane,
plus you can configure everything about from key bindings to mouse,
arrangement, etc etc. I really liked it how it doesn't get in your way. Splits
are amazing, it is the only terminal where clipboard has worked perfectly with
tmux,zsh,vim/emacs combo out of the box. I was really impressed how little
configuration it required.

------
pedrocr
Just got a Thinkpad T460s. Practically the same dimensions and specs of a X1
Carbon but with replaceable memory and disk. Can easily be made to have 20GB
of RAM and 1TB of SSD, and if someone makes a 32GB DIMM could potentially go
up to 36GB of RAM although that's not advertised as supported. Everything
works in Linux just fine and the 2560x1440 screen looks great.

~~~
creshal
T460s only has partially replaceable memory, some of it is soldered on. And
god help you if that fails outside warranty, spare Thinkpad mainboards usually
cost more than a new laptop.

~~~
soulnothing
I'm curious about the mother board comment. I have a t430, and rebuilt it the
motherboard cost me 30$ via ebay. Searching for the t430s I'm seeing about 40
-> 80 on ebay. I'd think that by the time you need to replace the mainboard,
it'd be at more attainable levels on the second hand market.

~~~
creshal
Third party mainboards are either used (and you don't know whether and for how
long they'll work) or not initialized (throwing errors during boot). Factory
replacements via Lenovo's spare parts service cost you $400+ for simple models
and $800+ for dedicated graphics models.

------
joefreeman
I mostly used Macs for about ten years, but I don't like the direction the
ecosystem is taking (cloud, app store, etc.), so recently switched to an XPS
13 (developer edition) running Ubuntu. (I actually also gave an SP4 a good
chance for a few months, but couldn't get on with Windows.) It's pretty decent
(both the laptop and Ubuntu) - sometimes wish the display was brighter or
speakers louder, but depends on the environment. Nice size, bit heavy, but
feels solid. Wifi was a bit dodgy before updating to 16.10 - seems fine now
though. The HD screen is nice (once you change the scale setting; there's a
problem with the touch screen not working after sleep though). I've never been
much of a keyboard snob, but this keyboard is so much nicer than a MBA.

~~~
sjnair96
Just making sure you meant to say what you did; did you say the xps13 was a
bit heavy? I thought it was rather light.

~~~
joefreeman
I think this is more about feeling heavier than it looks. Pretty sure it's
heavier than my 13" MBA though (despite being smaller, area-wise).

------
dothis
One thing I never liked about my Macbook is that there is no option for a
matte screen. So I consider switching and finally getting a matte one now:

[http://www.productchart.com/laptops/sets/1](http://www.productchart.com/laptops/sets/1)

I will replace Windows with Linux. I heard Thinkpads are good for this. But
the Dell XPS series looks very compelling too.

------
chillacy
You might want to be more specific, about the "pro" part that you want which
is no longer in the MBP. For instance others have pointed out that the 16GB
limitation is in all notebooks which use the same intel chipset and low
voltage ram, so you'll have to sacrifice battery life for more memory. That's
fine for some folks but not for others.

~~~
icebraining
_you 'll have to sacrifice battery life for more memory_

Or get a bigger battery. Not all laptops are stuck with a non-removable
battery that must fit a certain size.

~~~
chillacy
Then you're sacrificing space. Look, that's a perfectly fine tradeoff, but OP
didn't mention what tradeoffs he was willing to make.

For me: I would rather have a smaller and lighter computer since I travel. The
battery doesn't have to last more than 5 hours since I'm either out and
traveling or at home and plugged in, but if it is plugged in it has to be able
to drive pixels on an external monitor.

------
kevlar1818
I honestly don't know what everyone is complaining about WRT the Dell XPS
line. I have a refurbished Dell XPS 13 (Skylake) -- NON-Developer Edition even
-- and I'm very happy running Arch Linux without any headaches. It's a great
laptop with excellent battery life and performance. I don't experience coil-
whine at all. (Although, I've heard the rumor that the coil whine is a bigger
deal on the XPS 15.)

Naturally, the Arch Linux community has an extremely helpful wiki to help you
get set up:

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_(2016)](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_\(2016\))

------
wyclif
I'd also miss iTerm.

Have you looked at the Dell XPS 13 Dev edition, the Razer Blade Pro, the
Lenovo X1 Carbon, Lenovo T Series, or the Asus UX305F?

------
idlewords
What about a 2015 MBP? I also have a 2012 model, with a little water damage,
and am seriously thinking of upgrading to 2015 and then giving Apple one more
upgrade cycle to come to its senses.

~~~
x0x0
My guess is there may be decent sales around thanksgiving as vendors look to
clear last year's stock. I'm mostly hoping saner people prevail at apple too.
Or you could learn to type on an ipad, which is clearly the future of
computing!

~~~
threeseed
Saner people did prevail at Apple. That's why for a laptop that typically
lasts 5+ years they went with USB-C to replace the other dozen antiquated
ports.

~~~
idlewords
Some of us were using those antiquated ports.

~~~
threeseed
I know. I'm one of them.

But I will always applaud Apple for when they do things like this because
through sheer attrition they will move the industry forward.

The iMac is largely what made USB a success. And I am hoping this will make a
single connector world a success.

~~~
idlewords
A single-connector world is not an end in itself. The reason anyone finds it
appealing is because it means people won't have to carry a forest of adapters
and connectors, or worry about incompatible devices.

But that's what Apple is now forcing us to do if we buy their new laptop.
USB-A is going to be around for years to come, as is HDMI. I'm not going to
throw out my extremely expensive Thunderbolt display because it uses a
heretical connector. I am not going to refuse to speak at a conference because
the projector doesn't work with my new machine.

The basic requirement of a professional machine is that it let us get our work
done. This is just design wank.

~~~
x0x0
As a wag on twitter said -- let's call it a courage of cables that we can haul
around with us!

------
x0x0
copying my comment from here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12832547](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12832547)

You can buy a dell xps 15 today that comes with: 3840 x 2160 display / 1tb
pcie solid state disk / nvidia gtx 960m (crucial for developing cuda programs
and prototyping deep learning on your laptop) / 32g ram. For $2340 (ten
percent off coupon at the top of the page). I'm not sure if this link will
work: [http://www.dell.com/en-
us/shop/productdetails/xps-15-9550-la...](http://www.dell.com/en-
us/shop/productdetails/xps-15-9550-laptop/dncwx1609h)

And this thing comes with regular usb ports and an hdmi port instead of usb-c
nonsense so I don't have to immediately drop $250 in dongles just to keep the
capabilities I already have. (And one usb-c port).

here's a detailed guide to getting with ubuntu from a year ago:
[https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2301071](https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2301071)

it appears that it only works modestly well. So if you buy this, you're
probably going to have to live with Windows or the issues in the above thread.

========

My personal plan is to buy a 1-ish year old mac and cross my fingers that
someone builds a well-supported powerful linux laptop by 2018. Good
sleep/power management support seems to be a common problem.

------
adamnemecek
I'm in the same situation and right now leaning towards a beefy hackintosh
desktop + maybe one of the small macbooks. It's such a pain though.

~~~
jftuga
Would using one effect your Apple Developer status if you are seen using one
of these?

------
wsloth
I've been using an HP Spectre X360 15" with a 4K touchscreen which is truly
amazing. The only downside is that the one USB 3 port is not a thunderbolt
port, making it not all that useful unless you get a dongle that allows you to
plug in a regular USB cable.

Other than that, I've been enjoying it immensely and it made me stick to
Windows at a time at which I really wanted to switch to Linux or MacOS.

------
viraptor
If you want more power Lenovo T. If you want something closer to air, Lenovo
X.

~~~
NietTim
I'm really skeptical about Lenovo because of the proprietary software issues
they've had, even read things about bioses with sketchy stuff in them which
couldn't be flashed and such.

~~~
siphr
Erm which proprietary software issues are you referring to?

~~~
NietTim
This [http://thehackernews.com/2015/08/lenovo-rootkit-
malware.html](http://thehackernews.com/2015/08/lenovo-rootkit-malware.html)

------
iworkforthem
Lenovo... works really well. Ubuntu + Lenovo can last many years.

------
lewich
I find Razer Blade laptop as a good replacement for Macbook pro. Also Pc
Specialist has custom laptops -
[https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/laptops/](https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/laptops/)

------
fgblanch
The options I am considering as substitutes for the new mbp 13" are:

\- The new razer blade stealth: Great built quality, kaby lake,
usb-c/thunderbolt 3, great screen, reasonable price, although im not sure
Ubuntu would work out of the box.

\- Xiaomi Air 13: This is not really a competitor but im really tempted to try
it. It is cheap (less than 1k) it looks like having a nice built quality, fast
ram, good i5 processor, dedicated nvidia GPU ( so may be some acceleration for
training small deep learning models). USB-C, USB3, HDMI, Ubuntu works out of
the box. CONS: you have to import it.

------
akerro
What's wrong with your current laptop?

~~~
Faaak
My first thought. Do you really need to change because you broke your macbook,
or do you want to change because its "trendy" ?

~~~
Maran
Few problems:

CPU is slowing down lately, even switching tabs in Chrome sometimes takes a
1sec to actually render the page.

Disk is getting too small. I use a lot of VMs for work and I never have enough
space to run them all.

Laptop is dead, if I replace it I will be without a laptop for weeks according
to Apple.

I let it drop once making the fan very noisy, not really a problem just
annoying.

~~~
mikhailt
So, you've dropped the laptop and the fan became noisy, which would also lead
to CPU throttling because if the fan isn't working right, CPU is going to
overheat and your laptop is going to suffer as the result of this.

Did you even take the back off to try to reseat it or clean up the laptop? You
can try to take it to an authorized Apple repair shop to see if they can re-
seat the fan/clean up the fans for you.

I have same '12 rMBP and the performance is just as snappy as it was back in
'12 and I've never reinstall OS either, so it's all consistent and snappy.

I have no plans to upgrade this because there's nothing else that comes close
to replacing it right now, not even '16 rMBP.

As for the disk, I put my VMs on external SSDs, works great. Certainly cheaper
than replacing the laptop and easier to upgrade every year to more storage.

------
ohazi
Lenovo T or X series, ASUS Zenbook series.

------
vilya
I love my Aorus X3:
[http://www.aorus.com/Product/Features/X3%20Plus%20v6](http://www.aorus.com/Product/Features/X3%20Plus%20v6)

Portability, power and build quality are all excellent. Battery life isn't up
to MacBook standards, but you get a good 4 to 5 hours on a single charge which
is still fairly usable. The trackpad isn't as nice as a MacBook either, but
it's good enough. Everything else about it has the MacBook Pro completely
outclassed in my opinion.

------
siphr
I am a Lenovo Thinkpad user x230 specifically. Heavily criticised by people
who love their X220's but it works great for me 12" form factor and packs a
punch, separate slot for SSD if you want one and loads of ports. I have 2
actually. One runs my home server. I dropped out of the main stream sphere
mainly because of this carrot donkey driven eco-system (Who knows where they
are taking us). I am quite happy with my Arch Linux deployment. Its decent for
gaming too.

------
andyfleming
This isn't really a recommendation, but if I could have it my way, I'd take
this computer, except with OS X:

[https://system76.com/laptops/oryx](https://system76.com/laptops/oryx)

• 15.6" 1080p IPS LED-backlit Display

• NVIDIA GeForce 1070 8GB

• 3.5 GHz i7-6700HQ

• 32 GB DD4 at 2400MHz (upgradeable to 64 GB)

• OS Drive: 512 GB NVMe (PCI with 2600MB/s read and 1600 MB/s write)

• 2nd Drive: 2.5" 1 TB SSD

• 1080p HD Webcam

• Kensington® Lock port

• 1x Gigabit Ethernet

• 1× HDMI

• 2× Mini DisplayPort

• 2× USB 3.1 Type-C

• 3× USB 3.0 Type-A

• Stereo Speakers

• Stereo Mic

• Headphone Jack

• Mic Jack

• S/PDIF

• SD Card Reader

• Ubuntu 16.04.1

$2,870

Obviously the dream would be for it to look like a MacBook Pro, but I would
give up the sleek case if I could run OS X reliably on that sucker.

~~~
kilburn
* off-center trackpad (of unknown quality) is right there a no-go for me...

------
cerved
I'm absolutely loving my SP4 as my main laptop for a couple of months. It has
enough juice to be able to do most things well, amazing display and weighs
like nothing.

------
et-al
What's the use case?

If it's just for general web development, my plan is to buy a used 2015 MBP,
but with AppleCare until mid-2018 or later, and re-roll the dice in two years.

------
petewailes
I'm running a HP Spectre 13. Couldn't be happier

~~~
aorth
They look great actually. Are you running Linux or Windows?

I've been a Mac user for the last few years, but spent the few before that as
a ThinkPad + GNU/Linux guy. I could see myself going back to GNU/Linux on the
desktop one day.

~~~
petewailes
I'm on Windows 10, with a VM linux (when it launched, driver support was buggy
to say the least, and I've not been bothered enough to try adding linux again)

------
noyesno
What is so special about iTerm? Features, font rendering?

For features and portability, I can warmly recommend SecureCRT[0], you won't
find a more capable terminal app anywhere.

[0]
[https://www.vandyke.com/products/securecrt/index.html](https://www.vandyke.com/products/securecrt/index.html)

~~~
CalRobert
I like the ability to easily have multiple panes without having to learn tmux.

~~~
howlinbash
I find that Terminator solves this problem.

You can control it with the mouse and the keybindings are much closer in
simplicity to iterm than tmux.

[https://linux.die.net/man/1/terminator](https://linux.die.net/man/1/terminator)

Check it out :-)

------
pknerd
I have March 2015 MB 2.9GHz with 8GB Ram. Working cool and I don't guess I'd
need up-gradation

------
Veus
Recently bought an Entroware Apollo
([https://www.entroware.com/store/laptops](https://www.entroware.com/store/laptops)).
Amazing device, if you don't mind Linux and are in the UK.

------
ctvo
I've been struggling with the same question, ending up sticking with the MBPs.

Resell value, build quality, battery life, weight are all factors that other
manufacturers can't match. I really wish they'd released something better
though.

------
baio_trg
Just will left it here [https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/surface/devices/surface-book](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/surface/devices/surface-book)

------
jsiepkes
I bought a HP zbook studio G3, looks nice, not heavy and can deal with 32GB
RAM ;-).

------
trapatsas
XMG ( [https://www.mysn.de](https://www.mysn.de) ) offers custom, fully
configurable high-end laptops. Take a look if you really want high performance
without compromises.

------
liviu
Disappointed by the new Macbook? Try the old Macbook.

------
beatpanda
The Dell developer edition laptops are really excellent machines. I've used
the M3800 and the XPS13 and found them both to be great.

------
koehr
I'm not a Mac User but I know that the Dell XPS 15 is a decent notebook with a
very good keyboard and all the connectors you need.

------
douche
Damn near anything. For the markup on equivalent specs that Apple commands,
you can often get two laptops from other manufacturers.

~~~
vetinari
That's not really true, if you configure equivalent rMBP and Thinkpad, the
Thinkpad is going to cost you more.

------
tired_man
For most things, my C720 Chromebook runs Ubuntu and handle any tasks I need.
Don't equate price with utility ;-)

------
jetbeau
Whoever builds an easy hackintosh with metabox level specs will have my
business

------
JazCE
see also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12815183](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12815183)

------
alex_hitchins
Dell XPS 15 (With touch screen retina style display).

------
k__
the zenbooks look like a good alternative a

------
rimantas
So what made MB "Pro"? SD card slot? Height? Weight? Absence of TouchBar?
People complain about 16GB RAM. Does your current MPB has more?

~~~
uniclaude
What made the MB "Pro", if memory serves right, it was filled with components
that represented the state of the art when it was released. Best screen,
latest generation of CPU, PCIe SSDs, etc... The best you could possibly get,
in a sturdy, well designed machine, coming with an OS that just works.

In 2013, some company even found that the best performing Windows laptop was a
MBP (!). [1]

[1]: [http://www.zdnet.com/article/want-the-most-reliable-
windows-...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/want-the-most-reliable-windows-pc-
buy-a-mac-or-maybe-a-dell/)

~~~
pjmlp
The GPUs were never state of the art on Mac laptops, and they don't matter for
those that just use iTerm + Emacs/Vi.

