
Ask HN: Who is switching away from MacBooks this year? - nunez
I noticed that a lot of my colleagues were thinking of switching away from the Mac and onto Surface Books or Surface Pros. I&#x27;ve had a Surface Pro for the last six months after having MacBooks for two years prior, and some bugs aside, I am really happy with it.<p>Who else is thinking of doing this?
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akulbe
I switched away from a 2016 MBP w/Touch Bar. Switched to a Dell XPS (9560).

For the curious, here are the specs and price: MBP: 2.9GHz i7, 16GB, 2TB NVMe,
Radeon Pro 460 4GB GPU - $4299

XPS: 2.8GHz i7 (Kaby Lake), 32GB, 1TB NVMe, Nvidia GTX 1050 4GB @ 4K res -
$2499

The big jump in price in the full spec iMac is the 2TB of storage. NVMe isn't
cheap.

If they were both at 1TB storage, and more comparable spec for spec, the XPS
makes for a more powerful machine. (and for _me_ raw power is _WAY_ more
important than thin/light)

Why did I switch? Major GPU issues, a gimmicky touchbar with only TouchID as
it's useful piece, crappy battery life, and the need for something reliable
that wasn't going to flake at the drop of a hat.

Like I've commented elsewhere, it's hard not to get the impression that all
Apple cares about is the iPhone.

They've been making thin and light the priority, at the expense of things that
power users want.

Lest anyone assume I'm stomping off mad... I've been a _hardcore_ Mac user for
_14_ years.

I am using Windows 10 on the XPS. I figured it would be a major source of
pain, in terms of workflow, to switch back. The Windows Subsystem for Linux
takes almost all of that pain away.

I still have my MBP, but it's sitting on the shelf. Once more updates come
out, maybe I'll revisit. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
sreenadh
What is your OS?

~~~
akulbe
I'm using Windows 10. Fast Ring.

~~~
pmarreck
Ugh, I don't have the option to switch rings. Is this dependent on a specific
version of Win10?

~~~
WayneBro
You need to join the Windows Insider program first -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Insider#Rings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Insider#Rings)

~~~
pmarreck
And link it to my Win login, apparently.

Thanks for the tip!

------
steffan
I'll present a contrary view: I love my new MacBook Pro. It's thinner and
lighter than my last one; relevant to me because I travel extensively.

I find that the battery lasts longer than my last MacBook Pro as well.

I've seen the Surface Pro, and I find it intriguing, but can't really picture
wanting to purchase or use one.

~~~
andymoe
Me too. I got a new 13" non-touchbar MBP pro after my previous 15" lasted
_seven_ years until Apple dropped support for it from the new OS. It still ran
Xcode OK. Why would I not buy another? New MBP is great.

------
peteretep
Life's too short to not run OS X on my primary work machine.

~~~
sreenadh
As an ex-windows user for over 15 yrs, this is my main point. Despite me
hating the hardware, in osx, it just works. No drama.

~~~
pmarreck
Did you yet notice how hard it is to convince other Windows users of this?

~~~
WayneBro
It's hard to convince us because it's not true. As a matter of fact, the
opposite is true - hardware certainly doesn't "just work" in Apple's ecosystem
and it does just work with Windows.

I use Mac and Windows every day at work. Rarely, if ever, do I have any issues
with my Windows hardware but my Mac hardware constantly causes me problems.
Just last week I had to take steps to "zap the PRAM" on my 2012 Mac Pro since
every USB port died for no reason.

I also have multiple wireless USB mice that work fine on my Macs until I go to
the Updates tab of the App Store...at which point they simply stop working.
Another problem I have with my Macs is that there is no built-in way to
disable an external monitor without unplugging it or powering it down.

Honestly, I've been using Macs since the 90's, I've always had hardware
problems with them and when I look around I see others having the same
problems - so I know it's not just me. If you search the web you can see
millions of others having Mac hardware issues - so I'm not really sure where
Apple fans are getting the idea that Mac hardware "just works" because it
quite obviously does not.

~~~
akulbe
It's not "Mac works" and "Windows doesn't work" or vice versa. They both have
issues, regularly, and often trade places being worse. They BOTH suck.

It's a matter of what issues you feel comfortable dealing with. There is no
computer utopia, unless you're only surfing and writing documents, and need
nothing more complex than a Chromebook. ;)

~~~
WayneBro
I use Mac and Windows every day and I'm certainly comfortable with both of
them. Many of my Mac hardware issues have no fix at all though.

The one I mentioned about certain USB mice dying has never been fixed. Another
thing that will never ever be fixed is the lack of choice video cards that I
can put into the PCIe slot on my Mac Pro. Other problems with PRAM or
SMC/sleep have a "fix" but somehow they keep popping up and you have to keep
applying the fix. I can tell you honestly that I never have recurring problems
on the Windows because things get fixed quite rapidly since Microsoft
obviously still cares about Windows.

Anyway, I don't care about Chromebooks or other walled garden devices really.
Even if I just wanted something to browse with I would prefer a Windows tablet
so I could have some freedom ;)

~~~
akulbe
I had a Surface Book. It was my first foray back into Windows territory. The
device itself is amazing. Blows the doors off an iPad, in terms of
productivity. (remember: long time Apple user)

Unfortunately, I ragequit it and sold it after dealing with the "sleep of
death" issue enough times. Well-documented issue, and supposedly fixed with
updates. (that was not my experience).

~~~
WayneBro
The Surface Book got fixed for good with a firmware update though.

Meanwhile, all of the Mac problems I mentioned are still not fixed and Apple
is still quite obviously, ignoring their desktop OS. They've also always hated
power users where-as Microsoft caters to them on hand and foot.

~~~
akulbe
I had that firmware update. The one that was supposed to fix it "for good".
Mine wasn't fixed, at all. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Definitely no arguments on the Mac stuff though... (as I type from my shiny
new Dell XPS)

------
dkarapetyan
Have had a dell xps 13 (project sputnik) for a while now. Best portable laptop
I've ever had. Mac doesn't even come close. Every time I have to use a Mac at
work I wonder why can't these people wise up. All our infra is Ubuntu. What is
the point of running OS X and dealing with all the cross-OS issues.

~~~
amirmansour
I assume you would be doing things in VMs, right!? So what cross-OS issues?

~~~
dkarapetyan
Why use a VM when I can run things directly on the bare metal or in a docker
container and not pay the virtualization overhead.

~~~
lokedhs
I'm not the original posted, but for me it's security and convenience reasons,
mostly. I use Qubes OS which presents a very nice UI that makes using multiple
VM's very seamless.

------
dkarl
I'm pretty sure my coding productivity would be a little higher on Linux, but
there's no way I'm going to give up the nice polished UI applications I get on
OS X and the near-universal ability to shift seamlessly between desktop and
mobile. I feel some kind of weird prepper compulsion to regularly think about
how I would do the transition back to Linux, but I really don't relish the
thought of going back to being my own personal integration engineer and
sinking my time into disappointing "___ equivalent" Linux applications.

------
jasone
I had long been weary of juggling VMWare guests' RAM consumption on my MacBook
Pro, but I held out for a modern system with more RAM (whether MacBook Pro or
updated Mac Pro), until the most recent refresh. Two months ago, I purchased a
Linux workstation with a modest 128 GiB RAM, and have barely touched my laptop
since.

In 2005, I bought a quad-core Opteron workstation with 16 GiB RAM. That Apple
wouldn't offer anything substantially more powerful in a laptop form factor a
dozen years later boggles the mind. Granted, my use case may be atypical (lots
of jemalloc portability development/testing), but between the anemic hardware
options and the de-emphasis of developer products, I'm sufficiently
disenfranchised at this point that even after working at Apple on the
operating system (~10.1-10.4 range) and then using it ever since, I'm not
personally interested anymore in what Apple does next.

------
brightball
Switched to a beastly 17" Dell Precision 7710 running Fedora 25. It's not
small, very powerful, carbon fiber, holds 2-3 drives including the primary
NVMe and I can load up to 64GB of RAM.

The best part though...I can open up the bottom and replace parts anytime I
want.

Need to switch to an Android phone next because iTunes doesn't play nice on
Linux.

------
eyeownyde
The latest Razer Blade has worked out for me very well. Ubuntu / windows dual
boot has made it convenient for work / play alike. I unloaded the nvidia
drivers for similar battery in ubuntu vs windows.

------
Udo
Turns out I'll be the contrarian voice in an overwhelmingly Apple-positive
thread about switching away from the Mac:

OS X has been my primary productivity OS for more than ten years now, but I'm
in the process of switching. I'll keep using my 2012 MBP until it physically
falls apart, but make no mistake: this will be my last MacBook. Not sure what
I'll replace it with when the time comes, performant laptops with a long
battery life and 2TB+ storage are amazingly hard to come by these days.

My iPhone has a broken screen that can't be fixed without permanently losing
the finger print scanner, so that's going to be my last iPhone as well.

On the desktop side, I'm using an iMac/PC dual setup (with Synergy), so I'm
still dragging my heels a bit because honestly it hurts to let OS X go.
Windows and I will never be friends, but there is no question that the PC
platform is going to be the future for me.

To be clear, switching sucks royally for me, but staying would suck more.
macOS hasn't deteriorated to the point where I _want_ to leave it behind yet,
although the writing is on the wall. But Apple's hardware philosophy and
practice makes it so I'd really hate giving them even more money for yet
another even more hilariously overpriced, closed-down, underperforming,
outdated, unrepairable, not-upgradeable appliance that they think is going to
be the future of computing.

~~~
vSanjo
Do you think you'll try OSX on PC-hardware? I'm not sure how easy that is to
do still, but it might be worth a shot.

~~~
Udo
I've been thinking about making a Hackintosh, yes, but in the end I don't want
to have a setup that I constantly have to spend time on just to keep it alive.
I'm not sure if things have gotten better since I last looked into it, but it
seems to me you'll have to live with a degraded feature set and constant
tweaking.

~~~
peteretep

        > the end I don't want to have 
        > a setup that I constantly 
        > have to spend time on just 
        > to keep it alive
    

It's admittedly been about 5 years since I seriously tried to use Linux on the
desktop, and a little longer than that since Windows, but the biggest
concession I've made to keeping my OS X machine alive is a `bluetooth_reload`
alias. Is XF86Config still a thing? How about audio support?

~~~
pjz
XF86Config is now Xorg and is only used in the rare cases (dealing with
proprietary drivers or strange configurations, mostly) where you want to
override the defaults. Most people don't have an Xorg.conf file anymore.

For all that people complain about pulseaudio, it's been working pretty well
for me for the last 5 years or so.

I'll admit I'm a bit of an outlier, though: I run xubuntu as my base system
but i3 as my main window manager. I'm sooo much more productive on it than
anything else I've ever used - it's amazing how much time I used to spend
adjusting window sizes.

------
aprdm
It's hard to justify buying a new notebook in this day and age IMO. Since 2014
hardware has been about the same with the same price point for customer
notebooks..

I had a macbook air 13 from my company and would probably have kept it to this
date. Since my company took it back I am using some 13' toshiba with i3 and
4gb of ram running ubuntu.. haven't seen the need to upgrade.

~~~
astrodust
Since 2014 the hardware has been more than adequate for 90% of the people that
buy those sorts of machines. There's also not a lot of room for improvement
since the i5/i7 from 2014 and the i5/i7 from 2017 aren't dramatically
different.

> I am using some 13' toshiba with i3 and 4gb of ram...

You're complaining about the hardware not being better and you're using a
super low-end laptop. Maybe your real complaint is price, not performance, as
you can get machines like that for $200 if you're not concerned about anything
other than cost.

~~~
aprdm
Yep.

In MY day to day, as a backend / front-end / devops guy, it isn't worth the
money to buy anything better than what I have IMO.

All I do is vim, run stuff in cloud machines through ansible (SSH), and a
browser.

My last MacBook Air with an i7 was better than what I have but not $2k better.

------
notadoc
I bought a 2015 MacBook Pro, I would highly recommend one. The 2014 MBP is
still great too if you can find one, basically the same as the 2015 model.

I have negative interest in the touch bar or that awful keyboard.

------
dano
I'm a polyglot programmer and operating system user. Servers are mostly Linux,
some real hardware, some virtual, doesn't matter. Desktops are Windows or
Linux, laptops OSX or Windows.

On a day to day basis I use both a 2009 13" Mac Book pro and a 2015 Mac Book
Pro. However, for the prior 4 years I used a Dell XPS Windows 7 laptop.

The primary primary reason for using the Mac on a day to day basis is system
stability and responsiveness. The Mac just works. It always fires up. It is
highly responsive to my needs which are Web, Terminal (server admin), and
general office applications.

The Windows laptop, on the other hand, left me with little confidence from day
to day. Most days it would operate fine, then one day it would blue screen or
simply become unresponsive requiring a physical restart. Certainly all kinds
of tweaks were done over time to fix one thing or another related to some
application setting somewhere deep in the registry.

I've not tried Windows 10, but then it has no particular 10x value for me
either.

Note that the 2009 MBP was upgraded in 2012 to an SSD. It is still a crispy
fast system that beat the pants off of newer Dell laptops.

Just my $0.02.

------
majewsky
When I switched teams within my company in 2014, I was due for a new work
notebook and I got a Macbook because everyone in the new team was using them.
I have been screaming at macOS's bizarre window manager, ridiculous Unix
userland and only half-full-featured Outlook and Lync ever since, and praised
my Arch Linux VM where most of my actual work is taking place because it helps
me keep my sanity.

I'm posting this because, near the end of the year, the 3-year depreciation
period is over and I can (or rather, have to) get a new notebook, and it will
definitely be a Windows machine. ($work only has official Windows and Mac
images.) Outlook and Lync ^W Skype-for-Business will work much better (I will
be one of the few on the team who can do such amazing things as record Lync ^W
SfB sessions).

So yes, I am one of the guys you asked for, although probably not for the
reasons most people expect.

------
imauld
I have a Macbook Pro 2015 from my job and I'm really not fond of it. The
machine itself is nice and I like the keyboard but I hate the OS. We do all
our work inside Docker containers running Linux, all our infra runs on Linux
but we work on OSX.

It's not the worst thing in the world but it just seems unnecessary when
running the OS we target is just as simple.

------
Cofike
I have yet to use a machine that is as much of a pleasure to use as my mbp. I
came from linux and while it was able to get the job done, the third party
support for a lot of apps was less than ideal. Having everything synced up to
my iPhone (again coming from someone who's first smart phone was the original
droid) is fantastic as well.

------
dcw303
I recently got a Surface Pro after two cycles (~7 years) of MBP 15 inchers. I
wanted something lightweight I could draw on, and did think about the iPad Pro
with Pencil for a while, but in the end having the flexibility to install any
app won out (currently I'm using Aseprite and Manga Studio).

I've been using both Mac and Windows OSes since the last millennium, so I'm
not precious about either one. But I do personally prefer explorer over finder
in most aspects.

Visual Studio is a beast, and it's absolutely ridiculous that MS now give away
so many features for free in the community version.

I had no expectations for the type cover keyboard, but it turns out it is
fantastically comfortable and productive.

I have no plans to get a new Mac, but my 2014 MBP is still proving useful to
do remote iOS builds from Xamarin. I'll probably keep it around just for that
but if I never have to open Xcode again it will be too soon.

------
sallyfour
My 2013 MBPr is still fine. I'll probably get the new one late this year or
the next though. Haven't been especially impressed with Windows laptops.

My SO has a XPS 13 and while the build is much better than any Windows laptop
I've seen, I don't think it's worth switching.

Really my decision is between the smaller 12 inch vs the 13 inch.

------
jseliger
I would guess a lot of people based on anecdotal comments on forums and not
very many people based on sales data.

------
TACIXAT
Switched to one actually. My System 76 was aging and work bought me a new MBP.
It's nice. Definitely has the processing power to do everything that I would
want to when I'm away from my desktop. Good battery. My desktop (Ubuntu) is
still where I do most my work.

------
jkmcf
Apple will have to screw macOS up a lot for me to stop using it, especially if
work keeps buying my MBP.

I just reclaimed my 2009 MBP after upgrading my wife's MBP. I'd never notice
it wasn't current If it wasn't for running a little hot and the non-retina
screen.

------
xbmcuser
The price to power in most high end laptops is the same Apple is not priced
very high compared to others. But with the new Amd processors that could
change. And laptops with similar power and battery life at 2/3rd to half the
price is going to change things.

------
owebmaster
I made the switch 3 year ago to GNU/Linux. It is free and better for software
development than OSX (same order of magnitude) or Windows (by a lot).
Microsoft is investing high in marketing now, though.

~~~
siphr
Congratulation on becoming free(-er) :)

------
lokedhs
My personal laptop is still a 2011 Macbook Air. I was waiting for the new
MBP's before I upgraded but after they came out, it was clear that Apple had
lost me as a laptop customer.

It's not just the hardware. OSX has become steadily worse over the years, and
there is no indication that this will be reversed.

I'm not looking at getting myself a fully specced ThinkPad T470s: Kaby Lake
CPU, 24 GB DDR4 RAM and 1 TB NVMe SSD. I'll be running Linux on this thing.

------
nunez
I've thought about going back to the MacBook several times. It's a beautiful,
and very light, machine. However, I really, really value having a tablet that
I can write on that can also be a fully-fledged computer when it needs to be.
Being able to reorient the monitor in portrait mode is amazing. Also, the Type
Cover keyboard is amazing; leagues better than the chiclet keys on the
MacBooks.

After Windows 10 got Ubuntu, there was no looking back.

I am still thinking about replacing my iPad Air for an iPad Pro, though. I
love a small tablet I can write on, too.

------
mdlcc
You don’t need a new laptop. If you own a MacBook Pro Retina, 2013 (or
beyond), then you have all the computing power you need. Why waste the money,
why contribute to e-waste?

~~~
nunez
Because it's new and lighter?

------
nitai
I already did some time ago. I got a surface pro and until you own one you
don't know what you are missing. The form factor is simply awesome.

Then I also used to have a xps13 with Ubuntu. Great machine.

I've recently switched to a T460s with 20gb ram, 1tb SSD and i7. Comes with
all the ports you need and want. It's light and fast. Used to run Ubuntu for a
while full time. Recently switched to windows 10 and the WSL is a game
changer. Reminds me of the good old Mac days.

------
jgritty
There's very little chance of that happening, but we aren't rushing in to buy
a bunch of touchbar macbook pros to replace our existing machines either.

------
Mandatum
Switched after the release. Now on a Thinkpad with 32GB of RAM for half the
cost. Took a bit of adaption moving to Linux but I'm glad I did. Have had
minimal downtime since switching to Ubuntu, can only recommend it for work if
you're using a popular flavour and you've got popular hardware. Life's too
short to spend time fixing driver issues and configs.. Unless that's your job.
;)

~~~
brightball
Agreed. That's how I ended up with Fedora 25.

------
nether
Not me. Still on a mid-2011 13-inch MacBook Air. I'll probably switch to
whatever new MacBook is release this summer.

~~~
morecoffee
Same here, and it baffles me that all people talk about is MBP when MBA is
such a good alternative. I'll keep my Air until it dies, or a new one comes
out.

------
kevinherron
I went from a 2012 15" Retina MBP to a SP4 for about a year. It was okay.

I'm now back on a 2016 15" TB MBP and happy to be "home" on macOS.

There's really nothing wrong with this machine. It might not be the giant leap
forward from the 2015 model that people hoped for, but it's a perfectly fine
machine to get work done with.

------
efrafa
I have maxed MB Pro 15" late 2016 model and cant really imagine switching to
anything else for development.

------
mamcx
I don't want.

But here in Colombia, a good Apple machine cost DAMM TOO MUCH (ten months of
2x * basic income for a entry level Mac Pro), and each iteration is a bit
worse than the previous.

I'm holding on my iMac, but most likely I will build a hackintosh.

------
RikNieu
I'm nearing the time when my machine needs to be replaced. I haven't had a MBP
yet, and was set on getting one... until the latest release drama.

I still need to commit to a decision, but I'm eyeing the XSP13 lustfully now.

------
antoniuschan99
Thought about switching to Surface Book and using Scoop as a colleague
mentioned it to me, but decided to get the new MBP 2016 w/ Touchbar after
using a Macbook Air 2012.

Touchbar is great, don't know why people are complaining.

------
mergy
Seeing many folks that went to MacBook Pros last cycle but now going to Dell
or Lenovo HW. I lean more towards Lenovo, but the recent Dell semi-unibody
builds are very nice.

~~~
jseliger
In the meantime, Apple is selling more MBPs than ever:
[https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/01/apple-sets-revenue-
and...](https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/01/apple-sets-revenue-and-iphone-
sales-records-in-q1-of-2017/) :

 _Mac unit sales have rebounded after a few quarters of decline, and Mac
revenue is actually up by around $500 million, hopefully proving to Apple that
people actually will buy Macs when the company releases new ones. Both the
revenue growth and the unit sales growth can be attributed to the new MacBook
Pro_

------
Fomite
My MBP isn't quite in updating range yet, but I fully expect to buy the next
model MBP after the current one.

------
jpha9
I couldn't stick with the Surface and ended up coming back to my mbp. I guess
I drank the koolaid hard!

------
factorialboy
I will after my primary project ceases to be developing an iPhone app. Should
be sometime this summer.

------
oaf357
I just bought a new non-touchbar 15" MBP.

------
codewritinfool
Not me. My Mid-2015 Retina is fantastic.

------
lupinglade
Switching to a MacBook maybe.

------
nathancahill
Hail corporate

