
My search for a MacBook Pro alternative - gh1
https://medium.com/broken-window/my-search-for-a-macbook-pro-alternative-e549ea2b2dee#.15iywwt02
======
rayiner
I think part of the frustration with the new MBP is the realization that the
alternatives are kinda shoddy. The "state of Linux on Mac" article that hit
the front page recently was really a reminder about the attention to detail
that makes Macs great. Whereas other manufacturers keep dedicated GPU
framebuffers powered up even when using integrated graphics (because the
display is connected to the GPU), Apple connects the display to a custom
multiplexer so the dedicated GPU can be completely powered down. Thunderbolt
controllers draw 2W at idle, so Apple implements a non-standard ACPI function
to power the chip down when nothing is plugged in.

I've been looking to replace a 2013 15" rMBP and nothing else fits the bill. I
can get a T560 with a low-power dual core CPU that weighs almost a pound more
when you configure it with a battery as big as the one in the MBP. Or I can
get an XPS 15 where you can either get a Retina display or 10 hours of battery
life, but not both.

Surface Book comes close but it's only 13". And Microsoft had a ton of
execution problems with power management and sleep. Apparently building a good
laptop is really hard. Even Apple seems to have fucked up power management and
GPU integration in the latest MBP.

~~~
eropple
_> Thunderbolt controllers draw 2W at idle_

Shit, seriously? Do you have a cite for this? 'Cause that's wild.

~~~
rayiner
[https://lwn.net/Articles/707616/](https://lwn.net/Articles/707616/)

~~~
eropple
Wow. Explains a little bit about battery life when Thunderbolt devices are
active. Thanks.

------
lambdacomplete
The author is missing two HUGE points in favor of MBPs: battery life and
assistance.

Just today I went out at around 12 PM, worked non-stop in a nice cafe' until
around 4:30 PM, went to buy some stuff, worked for 2 more hours, came back and
realized I still had 30% left. That's insane (I'm using multiple VMs, IDEs,
Chrome etc.). Especially considering that I feel the upgrade to Sierra has
decreased battery life considerably.

Now, THAT's what you want from a laptop. Good performance, great materials and
not having to panic if you forget the charger at home.

Apple's customer care and global warranty are universally known. They will
even replace your battery for free (under warranty or Apple care) if its
capacity goes below 80% ([http://www.apple.com/batteries/service-and-
recycling/](http://www.apple.com/batteries/service-and-recycling/)).

(MBP early 2015 with 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD)

Note: I'm not an Apple fanboy (my phone is Android, never owned an iPhone) but
when a product is great you just have to admit it.

~~~
spacesword
This is no longer true with the 2016 MacBook Pro's. So far I love my new Mac,
but the battery is absolute crap.

~~~
alfalfasprout
Agreed. Battery life on my 2016 15" MBP is abysmal. I get maybe 4 hours of web
browsing time. Open up an IDE and it drops to like 3 hours.

------
sankyo
I also concluded Dell XPS 13 or Thinkpad Carbon, but never did a writeup.
Still have not bought anything.

I want: 16GB, no touch bar, good keyboard, retina screen. I want a stripped
down OS X, there are so many processes on El Capitain that just take up
memory, distract me, and clutter my screen. I want zfs, not apfs.

I do not want to lose weekends trying to get the webcam or the fans working in
Ubuntu. I'll miss homebrew if I use Ubuntu.

I feel like a person with no country. Somebody please pick up the torch that
Apple dropped and make a laptop for developers.

~~~
aphextron
> I'll miss homebrew if I use Ubuntu.

You'll prefer homebrew over aptitude...? I assumed the draw of Linux over OSX
was proper package management.

~~~
halilim
Actually, there is [http://linuxbrew.sh/](http://linuxbrew.sh/), which is a
fork of Homebrew, if one insists on using brew :) An advantage of brew over
apt et al. I imagine would be simplicity, e.g. you don't need to add PPAs,
import keys etc. Though I should add that in my limited experience with
linuxbrew, I still had to deal with custom flags/builds/whatever in case of
compatibility/version problems.

------
wrs
MacBooks are supposedly "overpriced", except he couldn't find any entirely
comparable hardware--not even counting the value of having macOS. So in what
sense are they overpriced?

It seems the other manufacturers care about this market niche even less than
Apple does.

~~~
superuser2
They're "overpriced" because you can buy more GHz, cores, GB ram, and GB
storage for drastically less money.

What you can't find is screen resolution, quality of the keyboard, trackpad,
and hinge, battery life, and general polish ("marketing") along with the other
specs, while still costing less.

~~~
redler
I agree, but I wouldn't characterize polish as "marketing". Polish includes
design cohesion, build quality, choice of materials, a philosophy of
engineering in service of the user experience (consider the comment elsewhere
in this thread about how Apple has bespoke handling for Thunderbolt to allow
it to power down at idle), and software/hardware integration. It's arguable
that Apple has slipped in some of these areas, but none of them are
"marketing", and all of them contribute to the sense of quality (and to cost).

~~~
superuser2
I agree, but I think most critics of Apple would claim that only specs are
real, and what we're talking about here is an illusion created by branding.

~~~
redler
I think we're on the same page. Apple's relatively costly products will be
seen as an especially bad value by those who do not see value in polish and
attention to detail (or who believe polish and attention to detail --
particularly Apple's --- are a marketing illusion).

------
NiceGuy_Ty
I've given up on trying to find the perfect developer laptop and have instead
gone for the desktop/chrome book combo.

I built a desktop with equivalent hardware specs to the MB Pro (2x8GB Ram,
Intel i5-6600 3.30 GHZ, 750GB SSD, and a GeForce 1060 6G video card) for a
little under a thousand dollars, and I dual booted it with Windows 10 and
Fedora 25.

I set up Ubuntu 14 with Crouton on my Acer Chromebook 14. I basically have it
in my bag all the time, and when I'm doing work on the go I'm in Ubuntu, and
I'm in ChromeOS while in class/Internet surfing.

Essentially I do school work and hobby programming on my desktop, actual work
on the computer in my workplace, and for everything between I have my chrome
book. Between github and Dropbox (and my work's ssh server) I don't have
problems syncing anything. Plus that's still cheaper than the bottom of line
13 inch MB Pro.

------
holografix
I wouldn't consider purchasing a laptop with a non "retina" screen in 2016.

Back a few years ago when I bought a 15' retina pro the leap in usability was
tremendous. Other laptops' screens and displays looked terribly outdated in
comparison.

Give me a slower processor, even a smaller hd - but I need the super-high-res
screen.

~~~
mynameishere
Honestly, why? What's the difference? Are you a graphic designer?

ED: Note to joshkpeterson--you are apparently hellbanned.

~~~
spronkey
There is actually one really useful factor, which is being able to view phone
displays at 100% resolution without scrolling.

------
AndyMcConachie
"With every passing year, the latest and the greatest in software is becoming
more CPU hungry and memory intensive. "

Maybe we shouldn't be calling it the latest and greatest? Maybe it's just the
latest?

~~~
makecheck
Not all uses of extra resources are bad. A “good” use of CPU or memory is any
added safety such as guards against memory corruption, extra checks at run
time, cryptography, etc. It may also be that in order to add sanity to web
browsing, E-mail, etc. you must devote cycles to spam detection or removal of
other unwanted content. Some of these things are only being done now because
computers are finally good enough.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of wasteful examples too. One seems to be pure
laziness. There are programs, I’m convinced, that have some kind of gigantic
VM in them just to ease porting efforts; probably emulating half a damned
operating system just to save somebody a few weeks of coding (heaven forbid
they learn something new about each target OS instead of just trying to make a
quick buck). It’s disgusting on the desktop but even worse on mobile where
every short-cut by a developer literally cost users money in data, battery
life, etc.

------
echelon
I got the latest gen Thinkpad X1 Carbon, and I couldn't be happier. The
keyboard is fantastic, and it's powerful despite how feather light it is. I'm
only disappointed by the tinny speakers.

~~~
cpfohl
This. Loved the Carbon, eventually traded it in for a mac, but only because I
couldn't figure out why our unit tests didn't pass on any linux variant I
tried. (Super weird).

~~~
mewse
This is always the proper way to fix a failing unit test.

~~~
cpfohl
After a full week, with everyone at my company offering suggestions no one
could figure it out...we now have a semi-permanent todo: figure out why our
unit tests don't work on linux.

~~~
waingake
File system case sensitivity?

~~~
cpfohl
Linux to Mac... Don't think so

------
FreedomToCreate
Apple achieved the perfect personal computer back in 2013. OSX Lion running on
the 13 or 15 inch retina was a killer product. Now they are regressing.

~~~
matt4077
No worries. In two or three years we can collectively weep in reminiscence of
Apple's glorious days, when they sold the first gen with the TouchBar and
macOS Sierra. That was a great combo for professionals! 10h battery life! The
ak47 keyboard! One plug to rule them all!

Now they're wasting their time with useless gimmicks like HoloSiri and I still
can't get more than 128GB of RAM.

~~~
FreedomToCreate
Actually if you look at the reviews for the 2013-2014 MacBook Pros, there
unanimously near perfect or perfect on every major tech site. Its very hard to
find actual criticism for those models from when they were released.

This doesn't hold true for the current gen, which outside of design choices,
have legitimate hardware issues like poor battery life, inconsistent palm
rejection on the mouse, and last gen processors.

------
ld00d
Am I the only one that has been just fine with 8GB RAM? I'm running glassfish,
IntelliJ, and serving JS over gulp. I have multiple browsers open with lots of
tabs. I also have several other applications running. I have yet to notice a
problem with RAM.

~~~
xapata
Multiple VMs cut into that.

~~~
rockdoe
Yeah, or doing builds in side a VM. Gets really slow if the linker / compiler
starts swapping etc.

------
cheriot
Does anyone use linux on a laptop and mind mentioning the battery life they
get? I joke that I'm trapped by apple because it's the only way to get battery
life and POSIX on the same machine.

~~~
lhl
I picked up an X250 last year w/ the extended 6-cell battery primarily for the
better battery life.

With TLP setup, I'm able to get 8-10hrs of battery life w/o issues (I've
gotten up to 13hrs if all I'm doing is editing text).

According to powertop, I can get power usage to go to over 18W on full load
(100% CPU/DRAM, 100% display backlight), but under my normal setup (wifi, 30%
display backlight) idle power consumption is about 4.8W - my idle states never
goes below C6/pc6 even running the latest 4.8 kernels. (Did the SATA power
state stuff ever get fixed?)

------
lhl
One thing that this and many other analyses seem to fail to distinguish when
comparing MBPs is that the 13" and 15" models are two very distinct lines.

The 13" are basically an ultraportable, with 15W "U" processors and the 15"
are thin and light workstation class machines - they have Intel's beefiest 45W
"HQ" processors (and the option of an overpriced mid-tier mobile GPU).

Almost all of this article's recommendations are for a MBP 13 replacement,
which IMO is less compelling - you can get some things that are cheaper (and
w/o a soldered in SSD), but nothing that's outright better, especially when
things like fit and finish and battery life are taken into account. I think
the best alternative now is the new HP Spectre x360 - it has a FHD screen with
comparable color gamut, comparable battery life, and you can get twice the
RAM/storage as the MBP 13 while still paying 1/3 less.

If battery life (and a high-end CPU) is important to you, then your best
option for a 2016 MBP 15 alternative... is probably the 2015 MBP 15. Battery
life is the real razor here. The 2016 MBP 15 does 10h on wifi, 8.6h w/ h.264
playback, but a measly 0.9h under full load. The 2015 MBP 15 will get you 7.5h
on wifi, 6.8h w/ h.264, but 1.75h under full load. The
i7-4770HQ/i7-4870HQ/i7-4980HQs, while older, actually performs about the
same/better to the new Skylake processors. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Of all the PCs out there, I'd say the XPS 15 9550 might be the closest
competition - it has a great 100% sRGB / 89% Adobe RGB UHD screen option and
is half the price of a similarly speced 2016 MBP 15 (although you'd probably
be able to find a 2015 for around the same price) but half the battery life
(just over 5 hours) when on wifi, and even close to a year in, still has some
buggy firmware (screen flicker at lower levels, waking up from sleep under
vibration) that sadly seems typical for PC vendors. [1]

IMO, the most compelling reason to get a PC laptop is if you need a beefier
GPU, but you'll need to be aware that you'll be making some trade-offs (and
making a time investment for swapping OS's).

(Screen gamut and battery numbers are all from Notebookcheck, who seem to do
the best laptop reviews around.)

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/5g0lh7/new_bios_1216_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/5g0lh7/new_bios_1216_released_for_xps_15_9550/)

------
YZF
I've used an MBP for the last two years (15" model) and had to replace it as
it got damaged. The biggest issue I had with it was the keyboard. I didn't
like it. I come from a 327X keyboard tradition :) I found the build quality,
the weight, the display, the battery life to be quite awesome. It was also
pretty quiet.

I looked at the new MBP and didn't like the price (even though the company
pays) and didn't like the new touch bar, I use the function keys. I also
didn't like the changes to the ports.

I'm typing this from my new Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga. So far I like it. It does
have a cheaper feel but I find I type faster on this keyboard (though they
seem to have copied some of Apples' bad design, IBM ThinkPads used to have
nicer keyboards). The display is good. There's a built-in digitizer and stylus
(which I haven't tried yet). Being able to flip the display around and stand
it upside down is a big space saver where it comes to using external keyboards
(which I'll probably do most of the time). It's lighter than the MBP (14" vs.
15" though). Being able to flip the display around to make a thick tablet
seems like a nice feature, we'll see how much I end using it. It's a little
noisier than the MBP. Battery life seems good so far. I have my HDMI port,
DisplayPort, and 3 USB ports.

If the MBP was slightly cheaper, lost the touchbar, kept the HDMI port I'd
probably go for it. If it could do this Yoga flip/stand that'd be a nice
bonus. Page-up/down would be nice too ;)

------
3327
AHHH You missed the best machine thats under the radar.

SAMSUNG series 9. runs linux like none other and is a fantastic machine in 15
inch lighter than all the competitors.

------
guelo
One of the things that's been infuriating me about the Macbook line is Apple's
refusal to go above 16GB. I'm constantly hitting that limit with my VM heavy
workload and bloated tools. In my search I keep coming back to the Thinkpad
T460p wondering if the bulky plastic case is worth the tradeoff for the raw
power. It's maddening I can't have both.

~~~
thatswrong0
To be fair, this seems to be a limitation from Intel (not supporting over 16
gigs of LPDDR4 RAM), not Apple.

~~~
guelo
If the T460p can do it Apple could too.

~~~
toasterlovin
You said earlier:

"In my search I keep coming back to the Thinkpad T460p wondering if the bulky
plastic case is worth the tradeoff for the raw power. It's maddening I can't
have both."

That's the thing. It's a trade off. If Apple could make a laptop with >16GB
RAM AND a sleek design AND good battery life, they would do that. But they
can't.

------
johne20
I wish it was just a hardware search, but I always find the other OS
alternatives have a gotcha or two for my needs.

Off topic, I have the new mac book pro 15" model (coming from 13" macbook),
and I have started to have severe wrist pain. I am not sure if it is because
of the new gigantic trackpad or keyboard. I am trying everything short of
returning it for now.

Any one else having this issue?

~~~
tiglionabbit
Is it carpal tunnel syndrome? Try to avoid resting your wrist on a surface
while typing. Also consider a better keyboard layout like dvorak or colemak.

~~~
johne20
Thanks for advice. I have had what I imagine is carpal tunnel syndrome 5-7
years ago but it had went away when I stopped using a mouse and just used
trackpad. This feels just like that again.

To avoid resting wrists, do you generally use a pad that supports your
forearms then or just hold arms/wrists up? My pain has always been just my
right wrist which I use on trackpad.

~~~
moh_maya
FWIW, if possible and if you haven't already, I'd suggest trying an external
trackball mouse.

Particularly the Microsoft ergonomic ones, or the equivalent Logitech ones.

Microsoft discontinued the one I use now (coming up to about 10 years and
still going strong) but this mouse from Logitech seems similar:

Logitech M570 Wireless Trackball:

[http://www.logitech.com/en-in/product/wireless-
trackball-m57...](http://www.logitech.com/en-in/product/wireless-
trackball-m570)

It made a big difference in how (less) stiff my right hand wrist (trackpad /
x230) felt in just a few days of use.

Definitely better than the trackpad or a regular mouse, IMO

~~~
nasmorn
I get pain in my wrists from touch pads so I always have a mouse with me. I
stopped believing in ergonomics when I worked for 3 months at a kitchen table
without any issues. As someone who had huge issues in the past. I guess you
gotta find something that works.

------
matt4077
So the result is... three notebooks with the same processor and SSD capacity
as the MBP, two of which also max out at 16GB?

I mean – the "reasoning" at the start is:

    
    
        With every passing year, the latest and the greatest in
        software is becoming more CPU hungry and memory intensive. 
       Therefore, it is important to have at least 16 GB memory 
       and the latest processors in my machine.
    

But it appears the real differences are simply price[0] and his preference for
cheap plastic housings?

Also:

    
    
        Lenovo has a long tradition of making laptops that last
        for many years. Their ThinkPad flagship line of laptops
        is targeted at developers and business users and has a 
        cult following among this user base.
    

No. IBM had a long history. Lenovo has a long history of preinstalling
crapware, and making enough money off it to buy the Thinkpad line.

    
    
        Made for professionals on the go...
    

Oh! This is a Lenovo PR effort. Sorry for disturbing, please move on.

[0]: Possibly. Considering the whole article boils down to nothing but price,
it's surprisingly laking any information about the prices

~~~
Spooky23
You're spot on here.

I've been critical and bitchy about Apple of late, but they make the best
laptops in the world, period. Just the touchpad alone tells the story.

People claim that they need to do all sorts of things to justify 32GB laptops
or running a dozen VMs. I don't see any evidence that these people really
exist in significant numbers.

~~~
caconym_
> People claim that they need to do all sorts of things to justify 32GB
> laptops or running a dozen VMs. I don't see any evidence that these people
> really exist in significant numbers.

I agree. Especially for programmers, I understand needing beefy specs if you
have _super_ heavy compiler workloads and/or do heavy GPU work, but how many
people is that really? And wouldn't most such people prefer a desktop anyway?

I am a software engineer and my personal machine is the supposedly ultra-wimpy
12" Macbook, and I love it. It legitimately handles every workload I throw at
it (including running multiple VMs) and it's so tiny and portable that it's
basically a zero-cost proposition to take it everywhere I go, which is
amazing. To me, sacrificing convenience for spec-sheet wankery is just silly,
but I've met a lot of people who I think would probably disagree with that,
like it's some badge of nerd honor to be walking around with a 5 lb brick of
RAM that's rarely if ever going to be more than 1/4 utilized.

I am not super stoked about the touch bar business, though. It seems like a
solution in search of a problem; the main draw of Apple laptops for me has
been their refined execution and lack of gimmickry. I am glad that my machine
dodged that bullet.

~~~
rockdoe
_And wouldn 't most such people prefer a desktop anyway?_

Well yes in terms of specs and performance, but you can't take that with you.
If you do GPU work you'll really want a discrete GPU with a complete
featureset. Some people were complaining about the new MacBooks having AMD
cards, I presume because most DL frameworks perform best with (or in some sad
cases only support) CUDA libraries.

------
hellogoodbyeeee
The Thinkpad's trackpad might be worse than Apple's, but it is a moot point.
Once you get used to the red nipple joystick thing, there is no going back.
This probably sounds silly, but it really is a game changer once you get used
to not having to pick up your hands from the keyboard to move the mouse.

~~~
habitue
The track pad on the X1 carbon is worse than Apple's, but the keyboard is
heavenly.

------
ksec
The biggest complain for new MBP, is memory. And those who complain the
loudest..... are ... programmers.

Not Graphics Designer, Video Editors. Programmers. Specifically Programmers
who uses lots ( or more then a few ) VMs.

May be as programmer, you should really care about what your programs
resources usage are. The problem is i am seeing lots of bloat in Apps.

And i still dont understand why you need 4 VM in a programmer's workflow. It
seems something that is deeply flawed.

What a lot of these people are complaining then, is simply price. But APPLE
HAS NEVER, in the life time of the company, offered cheap or value ( Tech Spec
) for money machines. Their product with new design, whether you like it or
not, has always been EXTRA expensive on the first cycle.

~~~
meesterdude
I laughed at this, because for me it's true. But they I got a little annoyed:

> May be as programmer, you should really care about what your programs
> resources usage are.

Maybe you shouldn't tell others how to do their jobs or how they should
prioritize their work :)

But for me it's because I distribute my Rspec specs across a bunch of VM's to
cut down test time.

Anyway, I think the new machines are overpriced and have poor specs and
execution. You could say they added their value in other ways, but thats been
on the slip for a while now too.

------
hobarrera
The begining of this article explains pretty well why I prefer an MBA to
anything else. For other companies, the same product line has completely
different products, with different build qualities, specs, compatibility, etc.

With an MBA, I can just pick it up, and stick ArchLinux onto it. No need to
check if this particular one had the bad build quality or not.

Other companies need to start learning from this example and get their shit
together. We don't want 20 product lines, which each vary every month. We want
to be able to pick a laptop without a week's worth of research!

------
tbrock
This guy fails to mention that the CPUs in the X1 and MacBook Pro are in a
different league.

The ULV chips in the X1 are comparable to the non touchbar pro and MacBook but
not the one with the touchbar with the big boy CPU.

------
brianwawok
What about something Sager / System76

~~~
leggomylibro
I used to have good luck with those, but the last one I ordered had a dodgy
GPU and lackluster build quality; I had to RMA it, which was a bitter pill
considering how much I'd liked the brand. But the previous machine I had from
them was going on 6 years old, and after that experience I wasn't confident
about owning one of their modern machines for that long out of warranty. (Full
disclosure, I actually ordered from Eurocom, not System76, but they sell the
same base models. No complaints about Eurocom, which is a terrific company,
just the machines that they rebrand.)

I wound up with an Asus UX303UB - it was about $500 cheaper, much lighter,
slimmer, sturdier, included a touchscreen, and had better or equal components
on all counts except the discrete GPU, which is a fairly wimpy 940m but good
enough for my purposes. It also works great out of the box with Mint 18 /
Xenial. My only complaint is that the design doesn't emphasize replaceable
parts, but the important parts still seem to be accessible and you pay a price
for slimness.

Sadly, I'm not sure how much life the Sager / Clevo kind of brands have left
in them, if they can't corner the 'durable and functional brick' market
anymore. There are some genuinely solid prosumer offerings, these days.

------
abrowne
I've been looking at the HP Elitebook 1030. Since it's a "business" model, you
can even custom order it without Windows (they install FreeDOS) and a matte
screen. But since it's a "business" model I can't find much in the way of
people who've actually tried it with Linux. But HP claims I can return a
custom order, so I might just try it. If only it had USB-C charging...

------
grayrest
I'm also not thrilled with the current round of Apple hardware. The main thing
that will keep me on MacOS for this round is that I really like the extra
modifier key. Dropping it means I have to change up all my keyboard shortcuts
and/or reconfigure everything to use the windows key as super or hyper. I'll
overpay this round and see what's up in 5 years.

~~~
philsnow
cmd / option / control / shift

"win" / alt / control / shift

what's the extra modifier on the macbook keyboard?

> have to change up all my keyboard shortcuts and/or reconfigure everything to
> use the windows key as super or hyper

having a single modifier dedicated to my window manager is something I
_sorely_ miss, using a MBP. cmd is used for everything, I don't want to use
trackpad motions to reach other desktops. Just a huge disaster.

Hammerspoon is likely going to be the only reason I ever consider buying a
MBP.

~~~
gry
Also, Shortcat. [https://shortcatapp.com/](https://shortcatapp.com/)

------
andrewflnr
I was pretty close to deciding on the XPS13 until I realized it only supports
Ethernet by a thunderbolt dongle, and Linux doesn't seem to support
thunderbolt hot plugging. So basically I wouldn't be able to plug in an
Ethernet cable without rebooting. Are there any good Linux laptops that don't
rely on thunderbolt, or am I making to big a deal of it?

~~~
abrowne
Why not USB 3 or USB-C? (The TB3 port is also a USB-C port.) E.g.
[http://plugable.com/products/usb3-e1000/](http://plugable.com/products/usb3-e1000/)
or
[http://plugable.com/products/usbc-e1000/](http://plugable.com/products/usbc-e1000/)

------
sydd
Im actually looking for the same thing, my shortlist is very similar to OP's
except that I find 13" laptops too small. Sadly this seriously restricts the
choices you can make, all the hype now is these devices.

I think I'll settle for the XPS 15, it has amazing design, good specs, my only
issue is that the SSD models are a bit too expensive.

~~~
jerf
If you're feeling saucy, it's easy to buy a non-SSD model and then buy an SSD
to stick in it. The downside is you end up with the smaller battery to
accommodate the hard drive. (Unless you consider that an upside, in which
case, win.)

~~~
spronkey
Or buy one with a really small SSD and upgrade?

~~~
jerf
That's actually what happens. The low-end models have cheap ssds used as a
cache. I'm not sure there's a model that ships with a literally empty nvme
slot.

------
sigjuice
I would pay touchbar prices for a 15" MacBook Pro which has function keys
instead. I tried one at an Apple store recently typing in vim for nearly an
hour. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't bring myself to like the
touchbar :/

~~~
garblegarble
It's not quite the same (muscle memory retraining required) but I've changed
the keyboard configuration on my Mac so that Caps Lock maps to Escape (I
realised I never used the caps lock key when I was writing COBOL and I'd kept
my pinky on the shift key most of the day - so the Caps Lock key on my Mac has
always been bound to nothing until recently). It's not perfect but it does
mean you get that nice tactile feedback that you'd get with the real escape
key.

I think it'd be interesting to see what vim would be like if there was touch
bar support (hoping iTerm will do something here eventually) and I could have
my most common commands be bound to a 'key'

------
gentleteblor
I've also been looking for a replacement to an aging ThinkPad. My favorite
option right now is the fashionably boring p50 from Lenovo. It's heavy and
ugly. But you can get it with Xeon processor, multi TB drives and 64GB RAM.

Swoon.

------
codeisawesome
Every time I read one of these articles I feel thankful for what I already
have, my beloved Macbook Pro without the touchbar madness. I don't know what
I'm going to do when this thing eventually croaks.

------
akhilcacharya
Meh, I don't think it's time to look for a MBPr replacement yet. The 2015
model is still pretty decent.

------
ourcat
The first link to the ThinkPad X1 is broken.

Pointing to 'op.lenovo.com' instead of 'shop.lenovo.com'

------
mcescalante
the i7 in the maxed out Pro is quad-core, not "dual core". I didn't really get
anything from this piece at all.

~~~
sillylogger
You might want to check on that. In my country, it is listed as dual-core.

~~~
hartator
I have one. I can confirm it's Quad core, not dual. Might be a typo on
marketing material.

~~~
hartator
Hardware Overview:

    
    
      Model Name:	MacBook Pro
      Model Identifier:	MacBookPro13,3
      Processor Name:	Intel Core i7
      Processor Speed:	2.6 GHz
      Number of Processors:	1
      Total Number of Cores:	4
      L2 Cache (per Core):	256 KB
      L3 Cache:	6 MB
      Memory:	16 GB
      Boot ROM Version:	MBP133.0226.B00
      SMC Version (system):	2.38f5

~~~
ulfw
That is hyper-threaded virtual cores. Only got 2 real ones.

------
edblarney
That's a lot of work.

Shame on those manufacturers for making their products so difficult to
dissect.

I agree with the sentiment of 'keeping alternatives', but given how much we
use our laptops, I'm willing to pay an extra $500 for a 'known quantity' (the
high end laptops by those mfgs. are generally expensive, i.e. maybe $500
cheaper than Macs, if that).

Thanks for doing this, I'm going to stick with my Mac.

Happy to consider alternatives as they come about.

------
rebootthesystem
I got one of these during the last sale (paid under $1,000):

[https://goo.gl/qlBt8A](https://goo.gl/qlBt8A)

Very nice machine. Used it on two coast-to-coast flights. Plenty of battery
life left after the flights.

I see some reviews from people claiming it overheated and failed.

Well, if you read their reviews they actually say stuff like "what's the point
of a laptop if you can't put it on your lap".

One look at the machine and you see it has a vent on the bottom and one on the
side. Which means that if you block the bottom vent by having it on your lap
or on a blanket while in bed, well, you are going to cook it. And cook it
these people did. Gotta use your brains folks!

Even laptops without the need for cooling airflow can overheat if placed on
something like a blanket or the carpet.

That said, this is a common design "feature" of many laptops. Not a deal-
breaker at all. In my case I always conscious of this stuff (probably because
of being an engineer) and it has never been an issue. I keep a "lap desk" just
like this one by my bed and couch just for this reason:

[https://goo.gl/hS9pd3](https://goo.gl/hS9pd3)

I should have bought half a dozen of them.

