
My next laptop isn't gonna be a Mac - ksec
http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2018/01/why-my-next-laptop-isnt-gonna-be-mac.html
======
scarface74
Is the author of the article actually complaining about not being able to run
68K Mac software in 2018? The last 68K Mac came out in 1994.

Why shouldn't Apple remove insecure ftp and telnet from the default
installation? You can still install it if you really need it but who in this
day and age would use anything that transmits passwords over plaintext?

As far as complaining about no desktop for Pros, I've read nothing but good
things about the iMac Pro.

There are a lot of real complaints about the Mac -the Mac Mini not being
upgraded in 4 years, the Mac Pro not being seriously upgraded in 5, the
MacBook line being dated and not keeping up with latest innovations, etc.

~~~
classichasclass
I'm going to regret this, but as the author of the blog post, let me be
explicit about what I'm complaining about.

Apple used to care that their stuff kept working. The 68K example was that you
could buy a computer, in 2005, that would still run software from 1990 or so.
Now I'm worried about a computer I bought in 2014 being still able to run
software which may have been updated last only a couple years before that. I
don't think Apple cares much about this anymore.

As far as telnet and ftp, I'll even concede no one would probably use at least
password secured stuff over cleartext in a WAN context (anonymous FTP is
arguable). But "just install it from Homebrew" is only a solution as long as
Apple lets it be a solution; see previous paragraph.

The iMac Pro is not a Mac Pro. It's an all-in-one desktop with high-end
features. That appeals to certain people, but not to me. And I don't care for
x86, never have.

If the post makes much about these issues and more than you think is
warranted, it's mostly because they do personally matter to me, but I think
they're emblematic of bigger problems with Apple. IMHO, Apple doesn't have an
interest in legacy users, and certainly not in legacy users that have
professional needs.

Clearly, pretty much everyone in this thread disagrees, and that's fine. Good
luck with it.

~~~
scarface74
I'm not disagreeing with your right to your opinion - just that I think you
have rose colored glasses on about Apple and their quest to maintain backwards
compatibility.

The Mac came out in 1984 and was incompatible with the Apple //e.

System 7 back in 1992 broke a number of old apps.

The 040 line came out and broke a number of apps.

Sure you _could_ run 68K Mac apps on the first PPC Macs but they were
dreadfully slow and people ended up buying SpeedDoubler by Connectix with a
much improved emulator.

Have you forgotten about all of the apps that broke that weren't "32 bit
clean" and the ones that broke that used self modifying code when the '040
came out?

~~~
classichasclass
But in all of those cases there was a mitigation. Apps that weren't 32-bit
clean could be run in 24-bit mode, at least for those machines that supported
it. The '040 had a cache switch. Heck, there was an IIe card for certain
models (though I think the Mac vs Apple II example is a little unfair; the
systems really have almost nothing in common architecturally, far less than
even Intel and Power Macs have in common).

For that matter, the 68K performance problem was mostly an issue for the 603.
It wasn't an issue on the 601, which had sufficient cache, nor for the 603e
which quickly displaced it. And when the PCI Power Macs came out, Apple had a
much better dynamic compilation translator available.

In none of these cases was the answer "too bad."

To flip your question around, would you argue that Apple's backwards
compatibility right now about the same as it was previously? Objectively I
don't think the evidence supports that.

~~~
scarface74
Yes. My first Mac in 1992 was a Mac LCII with a //e card. Before that, I had
an Apple //e. But the card only worked on a few Macs, was discontinued a few
years later, and never supported the //gs.

Just like Apple made a software emulator for the 68K. They could have done the
same for the Apple //e. There was a third party software Apple emulator that
worked fine on my 16Mhz LCII called Stop The Madness.

I had a 6100/60 - that was my 2nd Mac. It ran 68K software at about the speed
of a 25Mhz 68030 Mac and slightly slower than my by then LCII with a
68030/40Mhz accelerator.

All that being said, I left the Mac around 1998 and didn't come back until the
G4 Mac Mini in 2004 and the Intel Core Duo Mac Mini in 2006 and left again
around 2008.

The Mac outside of the iMacs are in sad shape now. I probably will get another
Mac this year just because I want a real Unix environment with more polish and
It's the only computer that I can do iOS development. I think the 5K iMac is a
decent buy.

~~~
classichasclass
> They could have done the same for the Apple //e.

Well, actually, they did, there was Gus (for the IIgs, but that would run IIe
stuff, of course). In fairness this didn't have wide distribution and is best
described as unofficial, but it existed.
[http://macgui.com/downloads/?file_id=14109&keywords=gus](http://macgui.com/downloads/?file_id=14109&keywords=gus)

Anyway, I actually do agree the 5K iMac is a nice computer for the right
person. I don't like high-end AIOs because I rarely upgrade all the components
simultaneously, but I can't deny it's slick.

------
jitl
Context: this guy maintains a version of Firefox for PowerPC Macs, TenFourFox.
He’s enough of a POWER architecture die-hard that he complains about $1800
laptops, but is cool to plunk down $4800 on a new POWER9 workstation that will
run none of the 68k Mac OS tools that he finds speedy.

Modern Apple has plenty of faults, but shipping x64 machines is not high up my
list.

------
knolan
My biggest problem with the current MacBook line up is the much higher price,
reduced feature set and the widely reported hardware quality issues with
keyboards, speakers and body rattles.

I won’t be buying a Mac with the current keyboard simply because I don’t want
the risk of it failing, not that I can afford one. Fortunately my mid 2014 15”
is still going strong.

iirc the first generation 2012 15” also has all kinds of problems. I’m hoping
Apple get their act together, and USB C is more ubiquitous, by the time I have
to upgrade.

(I’m also lucky enough to have a couple of work supplied machines of all
types)

~~~
s4vi0r
USB-C is already pretty ubiquitous, but I agree. I don't understand why they
dumbed down the mbp - the 'plain' macbook is more than good enough for most
consumers and I'm sure they would've loved the touchbar and whatnot.

Obviously I don't want them to make the pro into an ugly thinkpad style thing
for the sake of more battery and ports, but I think plenty of people would've
been perfectly fine with the new mbp mostly just being an upgrade to internals
and maybe the screen. Instead, they dumped the Esc key for a novelty feature
pretty much nobody really cares about, dumped the awesome magsafe charging,
and got rid of a bunch of ports - not that the old version had a ton in the
first place - for pretty much no good reason.

If there were another laptop on the market that Just Worked™ anywhere near as
well as the mbp, I definitely would've switched but as it is I'm sticking to
my late 2014 model and hoping the next gen mbp is less of a flop.

~~~
LaSombra
It's so ubiquitous that the newest iPhones still come with USB-A->Lightning
cables. You can't plug one on a brand new MacBook Pro without a dongle or
buying a new cable.

------
vbezhenar
My computer after MacBook Pro is PC with i5 7600 and I couldn't be happier.
Total cost was around $1200 and I got much more powerful system than my old
MacBook for which I paid $2500. Processor is not throttled mobile nonsense. I
bought 16 GB RAM for few hundred bucks and if I want, I can buy another 16GB
and put it there. Windows 10 is actually good enough (it's the first Windows
that's actually quite usable for me) and with all those bugs in new macOS I'm
not regretting about switching, I only regret about investing so much money in
Mac software.

I guess MacBooks are good for people who don't want to tinker with hardware or
who don't want to use Windows or Linux and ready to pay a lot of money for
this. I was hyped in the past about it, but it turned out that my priorities
are just very different.

Also, contrary to popular beliefs, I've found Apple's engineering very poor,
hardware is very unreliable and in many cases it seems to be done on purpose.
Apple is the only manufacturer, whose cords are wearing out, I never
encountered that with other manufacturers and I encountered that with every
Apple device I owned (2 macbooks, iPhone, iPad, iPod).

That said, I really like iOS, so, I guess, I'll still buy iPhone. And that's
the only reason I'm still looking into Macs (I like integration between iOS
and macOS). The only computer that I'm interested in is new Mac Pro, so I'll
wait and see what they'll make. But it's very unlikely that they'll make a
compelling computer, IMO.

~~~
herbst
I have a 6yo T420 with a Samsung SSD and 16GB of RAM. It was $400 with a new
battery. It easily outperforms the MBP 2015 monster I had before on my daily
programming tasks.

Point being. Most hardware is overkill anyway. You'll want enough RAM and the
fastest SSD you can afford.

~~~
lj3
I have a 4 year old W530 and I built my own PC this year for the first time in
over a decade. There's no comparison. If you can deal with the lack of
portability, you'll see a huge benefit.

Also, if you're a programmer, there's no such thing as "most hardware is
overkill anyway." Not in this age of bloated and slow software and tools. It's
worth it anytime you can shave a couple of seconds off the time it takes to
compile and/or interpret software. When it's something you do a couple hundred
times a day, the time you save adds up fast.

~~~
herbst
I build a $3000 beast like half a year before i bought the laptop. I also had
a MBP 2015 before. While given i dont do compiled language very often i dont
fully agree. My VM startup times barely differ (dont most scripting languages
boot single core anyway?) but i notice a real difference when working with
huge databases compared to my MBP because i simply have better RAM and a
faster SSD. However surely my desktop build was even faster.

~~~
lj3
Yes, single core speeds matter quite a bit. I can get faster single core clock
speeds for a desktop for a lot cheaper. It is useful to have a lot of cores
for running multiple VMs, but I would agree it's not worth spending 3k+ for a
16 core machine unless you're doing something that can utilize those cores.

In my mind, where the desktop rules is ram, bus speeds and cost. You can build
multiple desktops for the price of a similarly priced MBP.

------
_nalply
The only thing that still keeps me MacOS is the trackpad.

When my MBA 13" breaks, I will just replace it with another MBA 13", which I
already did two times. One got orange juice, the other vomit of my son.

But what if the MBA 13" is not available anymore?

It will be somewhat difficult for me to find a replacement. Perhaps a Surface
Book but will xfce handle the trackpad as smoothly as the MBA? But how to find
out for myself without risking a purchase first?

Did anyone install Linux on a Surface Book and compare the smoothness of the
trackpad with the one of the MBA?

~~~
rdl
Microsoft Stores tend to have the surface books for demo. You could boot from
USB to try xfce. You can also just buy one from a store with a lenient return
policy.

~~~
_nalply
Good idea! Will try this out.

~~~
pdappollonio
Please share your results.

~~~
_nalply
This will take some time, a few months to up to a year. Sorry.

However there's already one insight: Yesterday I tried out the track pad of
the Surface 1 and just tactically it does not feel the same as the MBA.
Perhaps Surface 2 is better, we will see in March 2018.

------
walkingolof
My next laptop became a Threadripper desktop and the old laptop is only used
for travel now.

Here is a PC-Partpicker recipe for my Threadripper machine.

[https://pcpartpicker.com/list/6JRNJV](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/6JRNJV)

1x Corsair 600Q (Can really recommend this case)

1x ASUS Prime X399-A Socket TR4 E-ATX

1x AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X s-TR4

1x Corsair Hydro Series H100i v2 CPU Cooler

1x Samsung 960 Pro 512GB M.2 PCI Express 3.0 x4 (NVMe)

1x Seagate IronWolf 4TB 3.5" SATA-600

4x G.Skill Flare X AMD Series 16GB 3200MHz DDR4

1x Corsair RMx Series RM850x 850Watt 80 PLUS Gold

~~~
lj3
Any opinions on going Threadripper over dual xeon?

~~~
walkingolof
I'm a fan of a market with competition, the CPU market has not had a lot of
that the past years, so I support AMD right.

Also, Threadripper is the best choice for price/performance, also easier to
build a quiet single "cpu" machine, than a dual setup.

------
thinkMOAR
Not being on Facebook, what does

"contains speculative fixes for hangs on Facebook"

mean?

~~~
paulfurtado
The sentence is saying that there was a bug in a previous version of
TenFourFox that caused the browser to hang when browsing to Facebook, and they
speculate that they have fixed the bug in this release.

~~~
thinkMOAR
ah sorry about that, the cookie warning was folded over the subtitle and
missed that line; wrongly assumed it was an operating system.

------
alexhektor
I didn't even know people are working on this kind of stuff.. and on a lot of
other fronts too, Apple is losing its edge by not having the newer form
factors like 2 in 1s and detachables. so much potential there.. but it's
really not their bread and butter any more..

~~~
gurkendoktor
For people who are frustrated about Apple's software quality (the OP seems to
be one of them), that would only make matters worse because additional form
factors = even more bugs.

------
jankotek
My next laptop is a phone with bluetooth keyboard.

I thing the idea of 'personal computer' you always carry with you is obsolete.
Every geek has multiple laptops and workstations, just swap those as needed.

------
cwisecarver
Headline: refers to a laptop

Article: several hundred words about an architecture that is not currently
available in a laptop form factor and probably never will be.

------
parski
I'm sure the vast majority of consumers hate the Touch Bar because they're
used to the escape key when they Vim.

------
rdl
The Talos is interesting but $3700 as an entry point is pretty painful.

------
dotsh
Good for you, still millions of users will by apple products because they are
simple to use out of box. People here are only thinking about their power user
experience forgetting that most users don't give a damn about that and are
whining that apple forget about "pro" users.

Apple never was design for being pro. Also argument about cost is silly. Apple
products cost almost the same as high-end computers are Samsung flagship
phones. Don't forget about high price of Microsoft products... World is about
money and that will never change and voice of pro users will never be heard as
they don't make that much money on you.

To emphasize, I'm not an Apple fanboy.

~~~
carlmr
>Apple never was design for being pro.

It was, but not for pro software engineers, but for pro designers, film
editors, etc.

------
desertsky
I won't be buying a mac anytime soon. Because my mid-2013 one still serves me
well for all my audio work, web dev and graphics programming needs.

When it fails I'll buy another.

PCs are great too.

Why are we still having these pissing contests?

------
toyg
Sorry, but anyone who writes this sort of thing cannot be considered
representative of any meaningfully-large consumer group (emphasis mine): “I
bought the Talos II because I wanted _something non-x86_ without lurking
proprietary obscenities like the Intel Management Engine (or even AMD's
Platform Secure Processor) that was nevertheless powerful enough to match
those chips in power, and the only thing practical and even close to it is
_modern Power ISA._ ”

