

Ask HN: MacBook Pro still preferred laptop for non-MS development? - andyouthink

At work I've used a MacBook Pro for the past several years, and I'm planning to get another laptop soon for home development use. Is it still the tool of choice, or are the changes towards Mac App Store making it less friendly towards development? Is the extra money worth the value for a serious developer? I'm leaning towards a MBP with 15" matte screen with SSD, but I've heard aftermarket SSDs can be better quality than what Apple provides, but I hear they were Kingston drives in the 2011 MBPs, and Kingston's not terrible, is it? I know Crucial and OCZ make decent ones, too, and Tom's hardware said previously that Intel were the best.<p>I'm ok using Linux too, but I'd rather spend more time developing and less time messing with driver issues and a crappier user experience like I tend to in Linux. Although, I recently put Lubuntu on a x100e and love it as a fast and modern lightweight OS, though the package manager isn't the easiest to use, but it is much less buggy than the Unity one with the screenshots and icons.<p>Windows imo is usually not well supported enough for development tools and languages, unless you're using it for .Net/MS development. You end up spending too much time fixing issues that another developer using OS X/*nix didn't test in Windows.
======
nirvdrum
I've recently switched from a MBP to a System76 laptop, after about 5 years of
running MacOS X, and I couldn't be much happier. The new MBPs are extremely
harsh to type on between the sharp edge and the keyboard. I ultimately had to
buy a Kinesis just to use it because the MBP destroyed my fingers. Most people
don't have that problem, but it's nice to be able to actually use my laptop as
a portable device again.

I also really don't like the direction Apple is taking MacOS. Lion chugs
resources and does odd things like disable my second monitor when apps go into
fullscreen mode. I don't really care much for the direction of the Mac app
store, too.

LinuxMint has been great. It's the first time I've really run a Linux desktop
since about 2003. What I miss is the polished apps. E.g., Adium is much better
than Pidgin and Postbox or Sparrow are much better than Thunderbird. But,
overall, I've been pleasantly surprised. Plus, I have 16 GB RAM now (could've
gone up to 32 GB) and the OS consumes a lot less of RAM in general.

~~~
pm90
I've always wanted to buy a system76 laptop; can you please elaborate on the
model that you bought? The only things I was unsure of: 1) Is it very heavy
(as in weight) compared to MBP? 2) Display quality? 3) Trackpad quality?

(I don't mean to turn this into a review, but just wanted a developers
experienced opinion on the issues that nagged me most)

~~~
nirvdrum
I bought the 15" Serval Pro (sp7). It weighs about the same as my 17" MBP did.
So, same weight, but smaller screen. Naturally it's thicker. I went with the
15" because at the time of purchase that was the only one with a matte display
option.

I had the hi-res matte 17" MBP. No doubt about it, that screen was nicer. But,
I really don't have any complaints about my new 15" screen. I've been using it
actively for about 2 months now and have gotten used to it.

The other two areas the MBP clearly win out are battery life and power supply.
I couldn't really use my MBP without a Kinesis, so long battery didn't mean
much. But the System76 gets about 2.5 hours like most other brands. The power
supply is a beast though and adds another 4 lbs or so when traveling. It also
lacks the awesome mag-safe connector.

Bonuses: comfortable keyboard, nice rubber finish, no sharp edges, integrated
keypad, plenty of ports and no need for dongles, replaceable battery, easy
hardware upgrades, up to 32 GB RAM (I went with 16 GB), and well-supported
hardware.

The trackpad is nice. It took some getting used to since I had used a clickpad
for so long.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. I dual-boot Win 7 for dev work and set it
up such that I can access that partition as a raw disk in VMWare. While it
works pretty well out of the box, it's a Linux laptop so I would expect to do
some tinkering. And while it's a pretty attractive system, it has nowhere near
the sex appeal of a MBP or MBA. That matters little to me. I treat it as a
portable workstation and really just want to get work done. But, just be aware
of what you're buying.

------
jorgenhorstink
I think it's quite a personal choice. I've stopped using Windows six years
ago, because I'm only working on webapplications that run in the browser. I
also believe there will be a great shift from installed software to
webapplications the next years.

If the software is going to be in the browser, you have to look for the tools
that make it as easy as possible to do so.

Personally I love Apple products. Indeed, you pay a premium, but my 4 year old
MacbookPro is still very fast, and makes no sounds. Second, Node.js, Eclipse,
Redis, etc, have great support for MacOS, and I've the feeling Windows is not
that much supported.

It is true Apple does not always uses the very best hardware components. For
half the price of a MacBook Pro, you can buy an ASUS with the same hardware
configuration. But what is important for me: how does the system perform with
the hardware it has?

So my prefered choice is a MacBook Pro indeed. But if you don't want to spent
the premium, you can also buy a less expensive notebook and install whatever
Linux distribution you like.

If you want to buy a new MacBook Pro, I'd wait if I were you, the current
model is almost at the end of the life cycle, and I'm waiting for the new
release... If you can wait a couple of months more, I'd wait.

~~~
jboggan
On the other hand, the current MacBook Pro line is quite mature which
translates to stability and lack of grievous hardware or firmware issues. I'm
still wary of buying a first generation Mac product after my experience
purchasing a newly-unveiled Macbook (white body) in June 2006. Between the
dirty-looking discoloration of the plastic and the random auto-shutdown
firmware bug that bricked my new laptop in the middle of the firmware update
to remedy aforementioned bug I was very unhappy with my early experience. It
turned out to be a great computer after the bugs were ironed out, but I'd
still rather avoid repeating the experience.

Is there any innovation expected in the MacBook Pro line that will be that
much of a leapfrog over the current incarnations? I'm wanting to buy a new
development laptop in the next two months as well and I can't see anything
other than a better form factor coming out of the next generation.

~~~
warmwaffles
Yes the next generation of MBP will not have a cd drive and is supposed to be
like a MBA but a little bigger.

~~~
glogla
Where did you get that information?

~~~
steventruong
He's referring to the usual suspect... rumors.

------
spobo
MacBook Air 13". Small, light, cool & silent running with a high resolution
and a great keyboard + touchpad. This truly is the best laptop I have ever
used.

Thanks to the chipset and SSD it handles everything like a champ. It can even
easily run a VirtualBox with win 7 and Visual Studio should you wish to do MS
development.

So I would recommend it to every programmer (who needs a laptop).

Comparing SSD's is silly though. It's like comparing supercars. Those small
performance differences are irrelevant. Especially when you are used to
something very very slow. I would definitely recommend buying something with
an SSD for development.

------
cubes
I lean toward the 13" Air. My current work laptop is a 15" Macbook Pro, but I
have an Air at home. If you don't need the larger screen, which I don't
because I plug into at least one extra monitor most of the time, the Air is a
nicer package. Less to lug to and from work. The other caveat is that, if you
need to run multiple development virtual machines for testing, the 4GB memory
max for the Air is somewhat limiting.

~~~
MattRogish
My current work laptop is a 13" air. For non-compiled development (e.g. JS or
other interpreted languages) I find the slower CPU of the Air and limited
memory (4GB) plenty sufficient.

~~~
huxley
The SSD and the screen make it for me.

I've also got a new Mac mini with a considerably faster processor and twice as
much RAM, but the little hard drive in it makes the mini seem slow as molasses
after getting accustomed to the SSD in the Air.

I can't go back to hard drives as my booting device.

------
Fizzadar
An Apple laptop is definitely the way to go - my dev laptop is an Air (late
2010) and it's still insanely fast (despite the out of date hardware). In many
ways this is thanks to the SSD drive (which is an Apple one).

The premium is definitely worth it, Apple products seem to last (and stay
fast) for years after their Windows equivalents. The other advantage if you're
developing webapplications is OSX, which makes it very easy to replicate a
Linux server (nginx, apache, RoR, node, php, mysql, redis, etc, etc all run
flawlessly).

------
sidman
It all comes down to the development you like to do. There was a time when i
really didnt like paying extra cash for a macbook (that at the time) seemed
like it was more expensive then the equivalent spec'd windows laptop for no
reason.

However now, i cant do without my macbook because for web and mobile you
really dont need anything else and the frameworks can be configured locally
without silly things like cygwin.

Alot of the developer tools are built in and you can do iPhone and android
development also (obviously on windows or linux you cant do iPhone dev ) which
means if you ever do decide you need to develop an iPhone app as part of your
offering you are going to have to get a macbook anyway.

The only downfall is if your still doing any blackberry development you can't
do it on a mac though you could always circumvent that by using a VM.

~~~
officialchicken
I use a late 2010 MBA with nvidia graphics for CUDA development. Apple's
agreement with Intel doesn't allow them to make products which use nv chips
anymore, so this is probably my last Apple for a while.

------
ergo14
Personally I would pick Thinkpad or Dell - you can check "compatibility" of
specific model with drivers shipped in linux kernel - so you don't have to
mess with drivers at all. At least that's what I always do - never had an
issue with compatiblity with linux nowdays, just buy what you know will be
supported best.

I think it more depends what you want to develop, i've often heard that it's
less hassle to play with python etc. on linux than on a bsd.

~~~
libria
This would be even more attractive if vendors consistently refunded the $130
if you refuse the Windows TOS (and license). Anyone had any luck with that?

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2008/08/lenovo-
wont-...](http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2008/08/lenovo-wont-refund-
the-windows-tax-without-an-nda.ars)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_refund>

~~~
pm90
This is the _only_ reason why I'm holding out buying a Dell laptop. I just
can't bring myself to pay so much money for something I'm just not gonna use
(I use linux)

------
sharms
I was looking for a new laptop also, and I found pretty good deals for a i5
based Acer TimelineX, which I was able to add 8GB of ram and a 256GB Samsung
SSD for ~$1000 total. I also run Ubuntu 12.04 on it, and documented all of the
non-intuitive things you might run into[1]. Battery life has been 8-9 hours
(my normal windows include Chrome, Sublime Text Editor and a terminal). I also
take advantage of the HDMI port and hook up a much larger screen when I get
home.

The Samsung SSD performs great, and the system boots up in what feels like
maybe 5 seconds, I haven't taken a stop watch to it yet.

1: [http://www.sharms.org/blog/2012/04/finding-a-great-ubuntu-
li...](http://www.sharms.org/blog/2012/04/finding-a-great-ubuntu-linux-laptop-
for-1000/)

------
revorad
We're a startup based in the UK, soon going to start selling Thinkpads (X121e,
possibly X220) with Linux pre-installed and fully tested (Ubuntu/Debian/Arch).

We'll ship to anywhere in Europe and are also looking at shipping to the USA
and other places.

If you're interested, please sign up here -
<http://giniji.com/ubuntu_laptops.html>.

I know most developers (at least on HN) now prefer Macbooks, but we want to
push hardware in the direction of software and make it more open. Before
laptops, I never remember buying a desktop PC off the shelf. I always
assembled my own from parts (as most of you probably did too). I miss being
close to the machine and want to bring it back.

~~~
pm90
try to make them beautiful, will you? I've always wanted a beautiful laptop
that could run linux.

------
pavanky
> I'm ok using Linux too, but I'd rather spend more time developing and less
> time messing with driver issues and a crappier user experience like I tend
> to in Linux.

Issues 5-6 years ago. No longer a problem.

~~~
octopus
This really depends on what combination of Linux distro and laptop you use.

If you install a user friendly distro like Ubuntu 12.04 yes, everything or
almost everything works as expected.

Try to install CentOS on a shiny new laptop and let me know if everything
works without messing with a lot of configuration files.

~~~
pavanky
When you say _linux_, it is so broad. You have choices. You choose Ubuntu /
Fedora / Linux Mint / ArchLinux / Gentoo for laptops. You choose CentOS /
Debian / Gentoo for (older) desktops and servers.

No one with a sane mind (or with enough Linux experience) would install CentOS
on a shiny new laptop.

~~~
octopus
Thanks, I've actually used Linux from ... 1999, hopefully I'm still sane even
if I need to use CentOS for RedHat compatibility on one of my shiny new
laptops.

------
cliang
I came from a 3 year old Thinkpad T400 to borrowing a new 15" MacBook Pro with
matte screen and SSD for iPad app dev. After feeling the improvements with the
new E420 thinkpads keyboards I think I'm going to wait for the new T430
Lenovos to arrive for my next upgrade.

For me, as a developer, nothing is more important than having a good keyboard.
The macbook has really cheap thin keys that don't have the feedback I'd like.
The wrist rest edge is sharp which leaves marks on my wrists. The indentation
where you cram in a finger to open the screen has knife sharp points on both
sides that just makes you wonder what were they thinking. It gets rather hot
underneath as well.

So ergonomically, it hasn't been that great of a transition for me even though
I wanted it to be. Maybe the macbook air or the 13" pro may be better. Plus
I'm too used to using the thinkpad's Trackpoint to mouse around. If you're a
vim user, it's awesome with mouse support enabled while keeping fingers near
the home row.

------
davecap1
I've been working with a 15" MBP for the past couple of years. I recently
swapped out the standard hard drive for a Kingston HyperX SSD (it was about
$200 for 120 gigs) and it has literally changed my life. I finally have a
responsive computer :) Maybe Kingston SSDs aren't the most performant, but I
can't imagine anything better at this point.

~~~
stevejalim
> I can't imagine anything better at this point

Swap out your optical drive for a second SSD/a massive HDD. I did that with a
OWC DataDoubler and it's a brilliant experience: most apps and OS on SSD load
in a blink, while data lives on the HDD to avoid heavy writes knackering the
SSD prematurely (because it lacks TRIM)

------
glogla
The hardware is definitely solid, whether you go for macbook pro, which has
faster cpu but needs aftermarket SSD, or macbook air that is slower but has
SSD integrated and has better resolution.

The OS ... depends on what are you developing. Mac OS is about as good for
consuming stuff as windows 7, i.e. pretty good. For developing web apps, with
textmate and github you're golden. But for full scale unix coding, you can't
get better than Linux, in the amount of helpful software available, and while
homebrew is cool, it has long way to go from aptitude.

Also, Apple kind of screwed up things with their throwing out of gcc (which
was obsolete and strange version anyway) so you can't even compile lot of FOSS
on Mac OS right now, especially multimedia software.

EDIT: for the record, I'm using old old old 2007 Macbook with OCZ SSD.

~~~
bricestacey
You can still install gcc. There are packages somewhere on github.

~~~
glogla
Interesting. Where?

~~~
bricestacey
<https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer>

Use the prebuilt packages in the readme.

~~~
glogla
I'll take a look, thanks. But if I understand the description (and if I
remember my experience from trying it out correctly), this is just gcc with
llvm backend but without Xcode. That's useful if you don't care about Xcode,
iPad development and just want compiler, but it doesn't solve the problem you
can't compile ffmpeg, mplayer, mysql and others on Mac OS.

It's however possible I remember wrong package, so I'll check that out.

~~~
bricestacey
I haven't tried ffmpeg, mplayer, or mysql but it let me build ruby using ruby-
build.

------
aeeeee
Hm, not a lot of linux laptop love so far so I'll throw my hat in. Last
December I bought a ASUS U31 (U31SD-A1 Intel Core i3 2310M 2.10GHz 13.3" 4GB
Memory 640GB HDD NVIDIA GeForce GT 520M) and I absolutely love it.

The only thing that didn't work with stock ubuntu was the optimus video but
with bumblebee it's fine, i only use it to switch off the nvidia anyway since
2d works fine on the intel chip. Also if you give windows a partition it's
great for games too.

10 hours of battery life which is probably the most important feature. I never
need to worry about bringing a charger when i travel on the weekends. I
decided to replace the internal drive with an intel SSD which was spendy, but
even after that the price was well below 1k.

------
danintherockies
I have the top of the line MBP 17" Quad Core i7, 256 GB SSD, top video card,
and 8 GB RAM. It runs Windows 7 in VMware faster than I have seen on a PC,
though I am sure there are PCs that can compete with the VM, I have been
thrilled with it. I also run two 27" Apple displays (2560x1440), one the new
Thunderbolt, that I daisy chain with my year-old mini-display port one. Then I
also have a 28" Hanns-G display that is 1900x1200 which I run with a Viewmax
USB video adapter (a little powered device). This last one has slow video
performance, but it is fine for word processing or e-mail. Writing this on it
now.

I have had very good luck with the SSD, my biggest complaint is size. If I put
all of my pictures, work files, and music on it, the drive would be full. I
like having everything on all my PCs for backup and convenience, but recently
bought a 3 TB Seagate GigE drive ($179) that I put on my router. It performs
pretty well, so I keep all my files there, and just the work stuff and a few
pictures on my 17". I like the ideal of 500 MB minimum now that I am out of
space, and those will seriously sting your pocketbook.

I am not a gamer, so for that, I would not take my advice, I can just tell you
that for the engineering work that I do, it rocks.

I am a "fastest you can get" computer guy, who still believes "the PC you want
will always cost you $4,000." So in my case, my $3,800 MBP was a bargain!

In all seriousness, you will be very happy with the top of the line 17". Would
I wait? If you can, I probably would; however, you will not be disappointed
with the current model.

------
thoughtsimple
I do development with a maxed out 2011 11" MacBook Air. It's tiny, just bigger
than an iPad but has a 1.8 GHz i7, 256 GB SSD and 4 GB which has been
adequate.

The screen is small but I don't do much development where I don't have a large
external monitor. In my home office I use a pricey Thunderbolt Display which
gives very good docking capabilities with a simple connection.

I love the nearly invisible weight and very portable size. Highly recommended
if your responsibilities don't require massive hardware capabilities.

------
octopus
Well, if you want to be trouble free and use your machine for coding I a think
Mac is a good choice. But I would wait for 1-2 months to see what the new Macs
will offer.

You really need to consider what kind of work are you going to do with your
new machine. If for e.g. you are interested in GPU computing then, at least
for now, a Mac computer is not a good choice.

If you are interested in having the best SSD and RAM on your laptop you can
buy your Mac with the default configuration and simply buy more RAM and a SSD
from Crucial, for example. From a economical point of view is cheaper to buy a
512 GB SSD from Crucial than to buy your Mac with a 512 GB SSD, same goes for
RAM.

------
aplh
You should consider buying an mb air instead of an mb pro. The ssd makes it
unbelievable fast and paired with an extra display it's a power house for
development. the mb air is just a solid piece of hardware. I have no regrets
buying one so far.

------
uptown
I've been using a 15" MBP for a little over a year. I added an aftermarket OCZ
Vertex 3 SSD since it was faster and cheaper than what was available from
Apple at the time (not sure if they've expanded their options) and some after-
market RAM for price reasons. I've found it to be the best machine for my use.
I've got Mac software (I do a lot of front-end graphics design work), and
Windows when I want it (via Parallels) and enough of a Linux/Unix feel for my
purposes with terminal-based stuff.

If I had to replace it, I'd get another MBP ... new ones are due out soon ....
likely before June, so wait if you can if that's what you decide to buy.

------
rossf7
I develop on a 15'' MBP but running Ubuntu in a VirtualBox VM. This means that
my OS in development is the same as in test and production. Plus it lets me
avoid the hardware issues that can come with running linux natively.

------
warpspeed
This hasn't really been mentioned yet, but to me a laptop is a big purchase,
so I look at resale value as a factor. The cycle I keep is about 2 years on my
Macs (and definitely buy AppleCare), then sell them off. Usually I can get
about 50-60% of my original investment back, meaning I can keep the latest
hardware for about $500/year (assuming a $2000 laptop). Then of course you can
write off that depreciation if you use it for business.

I'm not as versed on non-apples but my impression is that they don't hold
their value as well.

------
jerryji
Dell's latest XPS 14z (14") and 15z (15.6") are designed after MBP. You can
easily get an i7/8G RAM/1080FHD screen/750G 7200RPM HDD XPS below $1000 (
<http://bizspeaking.com/?q=dell+xps+15z> ) compared to Apple's $2199 i7/4G
RAM/1440x900 screen/750G 5400RPM MBP. How about the OS? Give all the RAM to
the MacOS VM. And if you sneer at VM, with the $1000+ saved, upgrade to 16G
RAM / 512G SSD and still have some change left for beer.

------
seltzered_
macbook pro 13" fan here - you can throw up to 16 gigs or ram in it, and an
ssd/hdd combo. wait another month for the new ones to come out though.

If I had to buy a non-apple laptop right now though with linux in mind, it'd
likely be a hp envy 14 spectre at some big discount. other contenders would be
the vaio z or samsung series 7. i'd usually recommend lenovo, but they haven't
had any good minimal designs come out aside from the too-small x220

~~~
crcastle
Is it undocumented that the MBPs can handle up to 16GB of RAM? According to
apple, they all can only go up to 8GB (or 4 for older models).

<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1270?viewlocale=en_US>

~~~
seltzered_
yes. It's undocumented but several people have installed it successfully, and
OWC has been selling 16gb kits for the past year or so:
[http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/133...](http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/1333DDR3S16P/)
.

------
argarg
Replacing my late 2011 MBP with a system76 lemur. I've been running linux on
the MBP for a while and it works well, except for the wireless where only G is
supported for now. I'll be receiving the system76 on monday so I can't tell if
I like it.

------
bsimpson
I'd get a 13" Air instead.

------
kenneth_reitz
Stay away from Crucial SSDs. I've had one for almost two years now — I've had
lots of trouble.

I just ordered an Intel 520 to replace it. I've heard great things.

~~~
pmdan
I think the key is to make sure the driver software is mature at the time of
purchase (no room for optimism when it comes to your data). I've had a Crucial
m225 for 2 years, perfect performance and reliability so far. The speed is not
setting any records but just about maxes out my SATA II bus anyway.

------
my8bird
sager quad core, 4gig ram, 500 gig hard drive. that was three years ago and my
next will be a sager also as the to power/cost ratio is great. with Ubuntu on
it things hum beautifully. having the extra cores is great so that I can
builds, watchrs, and a movie all running why working.

------
steventruong
Replace Macbook Pro for Macbook Air

------
mxey
I switched from Ubuntu on a ThinkPad to a MacBook Air 13" from mid 2011 and I
love it.

~~~
kaolinite
I switched from an iMac to Ubuntu on a Thinkpad from mid 2011 and I love it
;-)

I also have a desktop, mind. Don't know how anyone can do development solely
on a laptop.

~~~
jsolson
> Don't know how anyone can do development solely on a laptop.

Mmmm... I work exclusively on an 11" MacBook Air with no external display. My
coworkers think I'm a crazy person, but the constraints work for me. I stay
focussed on the one thing that's on screen.

------
dmishe
Yes

------
nirvana
New MacBook Pro models are coming soon. At the very least, Apple will likely
release new models with Ivy Bridge CPUs sometime between now and mid-summer.

Further, there's long been rumors that Apple was re-working the entire "Pro"
line to be more like the Air. So people are speculating that the new Pros will
be much thinner and drop optical drives, gain SSDs by default and (I hope)
have a dual SSD & HD configuration. (so you have the speed of SSD for your
boot disk and applications but an HD to store volumous data like photos and
video.)

This is rumor, of course, but it seems very logical. Apple is not a company
that normally keeps legacy technology around and the DVD has become pretty
legacy. There is a very active modding community replacing their DVD drive
with a second hard drive or SSD, enough that companies like OWC make special
parts for it, so I think Apple's a little behind the curve on booting that
legacy technology. (Personally I think they intended to do it last year with
the 2011 models, but held off because of a delay in some aspect of the
design.)

Even if you don't end up preferring the new model, the older models will get
cheap when they're announced.

I've gone shopping looking at other laptops periodically, but the unibody
construction of the MacBooks makes them unbeatable. You don't' realize how
flimsy plastic laptops feel until you've a unibody. Even the fairly robust
aluminum and titanium MacBooks feel flimsy by comparison.

These days so much of the quality of a laptop is very hidden- for instance,
putting four WiFi antennas in the MacBook Pro is not something most people
know about, and when shopping most people look to see that "wifi is built in"
to all the other models, but I've never seen a review that compared the
performance of Wifi across models and thus lowest price suppliers are
naturally just going to put one wifi antenna in there. And this goes one down
the line, chipsets, discrete components, etc. All of these things do have a
perceivable improvement on your use of the machine (e.g.: staying in a hotel
and not having to set a chair right by the door to get wifi, but being able to
sit on the bed. Would you, sitting by that door, think "gee, if I'd gotten a
macbook I wouldn't have this problem"? unlikely.)

Plus, if there is ever a problem, getting warranty coverage from other laptop
makers is a PITA. Especially compared to walking into any Apple store
worldwide and having your machine fixed within 30 minutes on the spot. (They
do repairs in the store, and since they have a minimum number of models they
have the parts they need on hand, but if they don't they're only a day or two
away...)

So, I'd say the Apple Store itself is a big advantage for MacBook Pros, but
that only works if you have an Apple store nearby.

Finally, I'd be wary of non Samsung SSDs. I've owned two SSDs: an Intel and a
Sandforce based one, and I've had _four_ SSD failure so far. The Intel failed
1 year after buying it taking all of its data (and it had been 2 days since
I'd backed up) with it. The replacement is still working. The Sandforce drive
failed _THREE TIMES_. First time sent it back and they flashed it, second time
they replaced the drive, third time I gave up on SSDs and went back to
spinning rust.[1] Those three failure were within 8 months- the first time it
failed was within 2 weeks.

The problem with SSDs doesn't seem to be flash wearing out (not within
2weeks-1year) but with the controllers wedging themselves because they've got
a very difficult job managing the flash (and not a lot of RAM and are screwed
if they lose power while live data is in the RAM). Since they're doing
compression and all kinds of magical tricks to get performance and "manage"
the data, that's what causes trouble. Samsung SSDs which aren't nearly as
managed, and are just just a bunch of flash, seems to be much more reliable.

So, I won't use an SSD again until its under Apple's warranty because I can
just then drop it off at an apple store if it gets wedged, and I think the
ones Apple ships are a lot less likely to get wedged and I'll have my time
machine drive connected all the time so the oldest my backup would be is an
hour.

I can't speak to running Linux, but a recent interview with Linus on
TechCrunch he said he was using a Macbook Air (because he wants a silent
computer) and so I presume that means that Linux will run fine on MacBooks.

[1] I'm using only spinning rust. my co founder now has that intel ssd. Still
likes the speed but I worry that it will fail again.

------
wavephorm
The 15" Air's will probably be out soon, I'd wait for that.

