
Ask HN: MBP or Thinkpad - notsony
This same question was asked 8 years ago - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=150530 - when the T61p was the new kid on the block.  Are Thinkpads still the best choice for programmers using Linux?  Or does a MacBook Pro running virtual machines make for a better development environment?  I don&#x27;t use OS X much so I&#x27;m probably biased, but just from a hardware perspective, I feel the new range of 2015 Thinkpads with high resolution screens,  19-20hr battery life and the restoration of 3 physical buttons by the trackpoint are hard to beat.  What are people in start-ups using these days?
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showsover
I was also looking for a new laptop, and bought my first mac a week ago. It's
a bit more expensive (bought apple care too), but I hope it'll be worth the
price.

I picked the MBP because of the screen / resolution, batterij, and the hinges.
Wobbly screens make me go bananas.

A comparable laptop makes you choose between either screen or battery, for
about the same price.

~~~
robflynn
I am happy with my MBP. I used other laptops previously and they seemed to
crap out on me more often than I thought they should. The MBP has been
reliable for a few years now. Like others below said, YMMV.

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japhyr
One thing I rarely see mentioned in these discussions is your proximity to an
Apple store. Macbooks are great as long as they just work. But when they stop
working, life sucks if you can't walk your machine into an Apple store. Most
of us use our machines every day, and it's pretty hard to mail your computer
away for a month of service.

I'd consider a macbook more seriously if I lived anywhere near an Apple store.
Fortunately I'm quite happy on a Thinkpad (T430s currently).

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chrisbennet
I make my living with my laptop and I've used both. I prefer the MBP but I'm a
Windows programmer so YMMV.

Yes, they are expensive but they seem to last a little longer than the
Thinkpads. I think the Thinkpads _used_ to be a professional class machine but
I think they are coasting on their old reputation now. We had several fail
(screens mostly) in a 3 person shop where I worked.

At some point, the cost of the hardware pales in comparison to the downtime
you would experience if your machine failed. I haven't had any problems with
my (less than 2 years old) MBP Retina but I had a few things fail over the 7
years I had the previous MBP. I had a video board fail and I took it down to
the Apple store and got it fixed in a day or two. I replaced the hard drives
and fans myself as it got older.

Another thing in favor of the MBP in customer facing situations is the screen.
For demonstrating GUI's and graphics the MBP screen just looks good - though
it was a lot better when they had 17" screens.

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lrei
My lab uses mostly thinkpads with a few people having macbooks instead. I have
have a thinkpad at work but bought a MB with my own money. So you know my
choice.

What I can say is that thinkpad hardware quality varies wildly with some
having huge overheating problems (processors to max = system shutdown) while
every macbook i have owned (including the air) being absolutely ok with 12h
straight of having their cores to the max.

Build quality of thinkpads is low-ish when compared to macbooks and they
require more attention to cleaning and not being dropped.

On the other hand MBs only offer up to 16GB memory which feels arcane and
makes it impossible to do a lot of stuff. Apple being stingy with memory is
typical across their product ranges.

Generally having to run a VM is not something I like to do - unnecessary
friction/user time overhead. But the MB is ok for running both native linux
and running typical dev stuff on osx (though recent default compiler change to
clang is anoying).

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davidy123
Thinkpads are a large range, from the inexpensive business line to their
workstation line, each often having multiple display options. I've only ever
had the first Intel Macbook Pro, which really had heat and noise problems and
I didn't like a few other Mac things about it. Other than that I've been
running Linux on Thinkpads and not had any problems. Battery life is good
these days and I'm a Trackpoint fan, once you get used to it, it is precise,
excellent for scrolling and you never have to leave the home row. Some of the
decisions Lenovo made in the last generation 30 series were alarming, but they
seem to be more conscious of the value of Thinkpad's name to experts now and
how that's tied in with overall image. They should however find a way to go
back to two memory slots, some models only accept 8 or 12GB now, whereas they
used to accept 16.

~~~
notsony
I think there are too many models. I just came across the L range, which is
basically the same as the T range but cheaper and slightly bigger, but not by
much.

What's funny is that this L range can have 16 GB ram whereas the much nicer X
range can't because it has to comply with Intel's requirements (I believe of
8GB max) in order to be labelled an Ultrabook.

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nrr
You know, I had always wondered why, despite having 16GB of RAM in my X230
(and having had 16GB in my X301), the newer X240 and X250 models are capped at
8GB. Knowing that it's an Intel marketing thing certainly clears up my
confusion.

Unfortunately, this means that people like me who prefer powerful laptops in a
smaller form factor are pretty much limited to the retina MBPs now.

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natch
Sounds like you really like the new ThinkPads. Linux will run on either
machine.

One thing to consider (countering my point elsewhere in the thread) while I
don't believe Apple products are more expensive when all the features are
considered, Apple sure does overcharge for one thing, and that is memory. So,
depending on how much memory you want to get, that could make your decision.

Linux runs fine in VMs for me on the laptops I've done this on, a 4GB MBP, 8GB
air, and now 16GB MBP. I've met people running Linux directly on the metal as
well and they seemed happy with it. How is Lenovo's driver support for
features like power management and the trackpoint buttons you mention, is one
thing I would want to ask if I were you.

~~~
notsony
In a Google hangout, the Thinkpad team imagined what their dream classic
Thinkpad might be... rumor is that there might be a special edition Thinkpad
next week to celebrate 100 million Thinkpads sold.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/2w1tiv/uleadorg_hi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/2w1tiv/uleadorg_hints_something_big_is_coming_this_week/)

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Mr_OK
I have a MBP, 8GB, 2014 now and I'm happy. I also have a thinkpad t500 but it
has a dual core so you can't compare it.

The thinkpad is more of a rough notebook for a FabLab or when you are on the
road and it can get dirty.

The MBP is lighter and very powerful considering its size. OS X works like a
charm for me and I've been through many different OS'es so far (Win XP/7,
Ubuntu, Debian, Manjaro,...). It provides most of the stuff I need for
working, photoshop runs out of the box and some of the Mac tools are very
handy.

But I wouldn't trust OS X for security means. Therefor I'd use a TP with
Linux. I would use this for things like online-banking and private stuff.

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kweinber
For most, tbis really comes down to: which OS do you want to run commercial
software on, Windows or Mac OSX? Even though you'll try to stay pure linux,
there is always that pesky need to open a contract in Word or a photoshop file
and you have to dual-boot or vm to do it. I personally prefer thinkpad
hardware by a country mile but I chose a Mac for software compatibility
reasons.

If I could run commercial software on linux, I'd be on Linux full-stop.

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sreenadh
My pick is Thinkpad. As I am a windows user trying to move to Linux Mint TP is
the obvious choice. But the main reason is the keyboard which is just perfect.
I also love the red joy-stick like device for some quick use. Now for the
things I hate about TP. The body is cheapish plastic since Lenovo took it over
and its not comfortable when you use the laptop for long. The lack of official
driver support for Linux is another this that pisses me off.

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mjankowski
If you are a developer compare the screens - my T420 is pain for the eyes and
the screen ratio sucks for coding.

My next PC is going to be MBP or MS Surface Pro. No more crappy screens.

~~~
orkoden
Screen, keyboard and touchpad are super important. It's what you use most in a
laptop after all.

Lenovo offers different screens for the same models. Be careful to pick the
better one.

~~~
notsony
I found that using a trackpoint and 3 physical buttons has eliminated any
carpal tunnel like pains in my hands.

While the touchpad on MBPs is nice, I found clicking a button which isn't a
button quite stressful on the hands. Also, moving my hand to the touchpad and
then back up to the ASDF-JKL; typing position is uncomfortable having gotten
used to just moving one finger to the trackpoint.

The trackpoint does have one major flaw though - drift. Sometimes, it seems to
move itself and you have to correct it. Apparently there is some kind of
calibration going on, but it's quite annoying and I wish/hope there is some
kind of fix.

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devnonymous
I'd go with a thinkpad but then again, I prefer using linux (fedora
specifically) as my base OS and VMs for dev work. IMHO, you can run more vms
off linux on a TP than you can on a MBP. If your dev box is also going to be
used for other stuff and you don't mind OSX, you might as well buy the MBP.

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Sekas
I attempted to install Ubuntu 14.10 x86_64 on the new X1 Carbon this weekend,
and so far it has not worked straight out of the box. I am guessing it has to
do with the i5500 gfx adapter, but it's all a guess until i figured out what
went wrong.

~~~
orkoden
For running Linux on laptops it's usually best to get last year's model. Then
the software support will be there. I had to compile my own kernels for over a
year, before Ubuntu supported my hardware out of the box.

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smt88
I run Linux on my MBP. Because of Docker, I could never use OS X as my
everyday dev OS anymore. I need native support.

That said, I think you're paying an Apple premium for the MBP that isn't
really worth it.

~~~
natch
There is no Apple premium; that is a tired myth.

You simply get a lot more, and you do pay for it.

The MagSafe connector alone will save your laptop... and you don't need to
hack it yourself with a Dremel and epoxy. Battery design and power management,
unibody strength, big touchpad, beautiful sound system, Thunderbolt, resale
value, hand-me-down value... when you factor everything in, MBP is a no
brainer and it's the ThinkPad owners who end up overpaying.

~~~
collyw
It isn't a myth, it has been well documented that buying upgrades from the
Apple site is significantly more expensive than elsewhere.

~~~
natch
To be fair, we are talking about purchasing a new computer, not upgrading old
ones. And I did acknowledge that Apple overcharges for memory.

Owning a non-Apple computer, on the other hand, has other costs...

[https://bug1134506.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=85...](https://bug1134506.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=8566794)

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jhildings
Thinkpad every day of the week, MPBs are horrible to do hardware maintenance
on. You can also get static electric shocks from the chassi and they don't
have a DVI/HDMI connection

~~~
rasathus
They aren't particularly easy to take apart, but with todays hardware packing
I'm not sure any of them are. But the MBP Retina I'm typing this on certainly
has an HDMI connection.

~~~
jhildings
I haven't opened the "new" Thinkpads(with chiclet keyboard) , but the
T200-series etc are very easy to maintain. For example, the memory slot is
just one screw in a special hatch

And guess i was wrong about the HDMI, I've only had MPBs with DisplayPort

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dhruvbird
Thinkpad personally, but I am the 2% not using a MBP I feel.

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xena
If you are programming things that will only ever run in OSX, use a mac.

If you are programming things that will run on linux, don't fuck around and
get a thinkpad.

