I have 2 MacBook Pros from the 2012 to 2014 era. Love them both. Awesome hardware. I wish I could say the same for the software. Each version of OSX has gotten progressively worse for me as a developer since the high point that was Snow Leopard.
Several folks I know using Sierra and High Sierra are dealing with regular kernel panics.
I’ve started to contemplate what my next laptop and OS are going to be for work. Sometimes I harbor fantasies of buying another used MacBook Pro and installing something like Dragonfly or FreeBSD on it.
In the end, I’m probably going to settle for something like a Thinkpad that I’m “ok” with and some Linux distro.
Leaving aside “consumer” apps I need, there’s enough software like Zoom et al that support windows, Mac, and windows that I need for work that are going to end up being limiting factors.
I am currently writing this on a mid-2014 MBP with High Sierra and the most recent updates have been grim. I have a lot of hanging applications, even Apple applications like GarageBand, and have to restart a couple times a day to keep things usable.
It was a great computer for a long time, but the software recently has been terrible.
I accidentally upgraded by iPhone 7 to iOS 11 and now its mostly unusable. The level of lag opening a new application is nuts. Lyft as an example takes 60 to 90 seconds from when I open to it being usable.
Earlier today I opened the Messages app and wanted to take a picture and text it. It took almost 2 minutes for the message app to open, for me to be able to select the person I wanted to message, for that to open and then for the camera to come up. By the time it was ready, the thing I wanted to take a photo of was gone.
It feels like when I stopped using Apple products in the 90s again except now they have a lot more market share and they arent dealing with a signature laptop bursting into flames.
I had a 2011 macbook pro with the 15” screen that I thought could never be topped. Couldn’t justify the increased price for the 2016/2017 model so I went for a thinkpad t460p and loaded kbuntu on it, I’m very happy with the machine in general but there are a few irritances such as photos being synced between my laptop & iPhone no longer happens, its just not as integrated which I do miss.
Had a 2012 non-Retina (but the higher resolution variant) MBP until earlier this year. Had replaced the HDD with an SSD years ago, and upgraded even that to 1TB. Replaced the WiFi/Bluetooth card once it died. Took out the combo drive. Heavy, thick, but still worked great.
I ended up finally swapping out for the T470s. Slim, higher resolution, NVMe, Linux-compatible hardware.
Apple fanboy-ness aside, I own one of these along with a lot of other laptops (Apple and PCs) and out of them all these ones are probably best of the Apple lot in terms of ease of use of the device (not the OS). When the new ones came out with the touch bar and all that it turned me off pretty badly, primarily because of vim and the amount I use the esc key, and just the fact it was just one more overly complex bit of kit that was bound to break. I spend most of my time on an iMac with a “proper” clicky keyboard and when I have to swap to a laptop (for travel, etc…) these macbook pros take me the least amount of time to get to full speed typing/working without stumbles, etc… out of any of them, but saying they’re the best ever made is a bit much.
There are some pretty stellar ISV certified laptops out there that come with amazing specs and nice controls like the Dell Precision series and the Lenovo P50s that can handle more RAM, additional drives, etc… It’s way too hard to call any one single laptop “The best ever made” purely because controls are diverging a fair bit nowadays (Lenovo trackpad vs. apple trackpad) and I think if someone went from for instance a macbook to a lenovo they would instantly hate it because they aren’t used to the keyboard and trackpad style, but that doesn’t mean they’re worse, just different and you have to adjust your habits, when you do you might be surprised at how good these other setups actually are.
The three things that always bothered me about my 17-inch MacBook Pro and why I switched back to Windows are:
No longer a 17-inch screen version
Weird AZERTY keyboard layout (there’s no key for []{} and I needed to press and memorise 3-keys shortcuts like Alt+Ctrl+5 for each of these characters).
Cmd and Ctrl key roles are swapped which made it annoying when working on a Linux or Windows VM at the same time.
Other than that I loved the POSIX environment and terminal emulator but these issues bother me too much.
I’m writing this on one of these laptops, and it’s easily one of the best laptops I’ve ever had. I’ve noticed the keyboard is starting to go a bit squiffy on this, but I’ll just replace or repair it when the time comes.
I have to say, the newer Macs don’t excite me at all. If there was a version of this laptop with 32Gb of RAM, I’d consider it when it’s time to replace, but there’s just no real need to replace it otherwise.
I had to replace the keyboard on mine recently (the “e” stopped working, and I wasn’t able to fix it myself). The “authorised” solution is to replace the whole top case, which costs 700-900 New Zealand dollars here. I went with an unauthorised shop which put in a knockoff keyboard for $220. It feels a tiny bit off compared to the original keyboard, but I’m really glad I can now keep this laptop for another couple of years, because it’s great.
I haven’t used one myself, but the laptops from puri.sm look pretty good. A bit of a gamble, though (small company with not much of a track record yet).
I’ve had reasonable success with the Asus ZenBook. It’s a total ripoff of the macbook air design, but I’m fine with it. Runs Linux nicely and has reasonable support for OpenBSD (sans trackpad). It’s my daily driver for when I’m at school and can’t use a huge desktop machine like I normally would.
I returned the ZenBook because the fan was so noisy and would start as soon as you thought about moving the mouse. Instead, I got the HP Spectre x360, which was so silent I had to make -j something just to prove to myself that there was a fan. It also looks much better (one of the few laptops that look really good without being a Macbook ripoff).
Both seem to run Ubuntu just fine, though I’ve of course tested the Spectre much more.
Couldn’t agree more. Successive laptops have been steps down in some way or another - like the horrid squishy keyboard, or the less rugged mechanical design, or removing the Escape key, or or or ….
Couldn’t agree more. Had one of these for work for a couple years, was really happy with it, looked forward to putting off the upgrade cycle as much as possible. Unfortunately managed to screw up the screen with a bad screen wipe (long story on why the company would provide screen wipes capable of removing the coating of a MacBook, but that’s another story.)
The “upgrade” I got (bigger SSD, discrete GPU, a newer CPU) sucked: the screen would flicker when it randomly switched between the integrated and the discrete GPUs, whatever OS X does for deciding when to switch to the discrete GPU would be triggered by IntelliJ running for a few minutes, which in turn made the computer become hotter on the same loads. Finally. capital sin for a laptop: the battery life went down by a solid two to three hours. All in all, it was a downgrade by every measurable metric.
Now, between the new butterfly keyboard (which I’ve had to use on occasion and find appalling) and the “touch bar”, I’m really considering buying my first non-Apple laptop in over half a decade.
Possibly a bit Apple centric. Better title: why i like my old macbook pro more than the new one.
I’d never have clicked on that one! :)
I clicked on it expecting a Thinkpad, came away very disappointed. >:(
You might be new to marco.org? I don’t think he’s ever uttered the word “thinkpad” before. Apple fanboyism at it’s proverbial best.
I have 2 MacBook Pros from the 2012 to 2014 era. Love them both. Awesome hardware. I wish I could say the same for the software. Each version of OSX has gotten progressively worse for me as a developer since the high point that was Snow Leopard.
Several folks I know using Sierra and High Sierra are dealing with regular kernel panics.
I’ve started to contemplate what my next laptop and OS are going to be for work. Sometimes I harbor fantasies of buying another used MacBook Pro and installing something like Dragonfly or FreeBSD on it.
In the end, I’m probably going to settle for something like a Thinkpad that I’m “ok” with and some Linux distro.
Leaving aside “consumer” apps I need, there’s enough software like Zoom et al that support windows, Mac, and windows that I need for work that are going to end up being limiting factors.
I am currently writing this on a mid-2014 MBP with High Sierra and the most recent updates have been grim. I have a lot of hanging applications, even Apple applications like GarageBand, and have to restart a couple times a day to keep things usable.
It was a great computer for a long time, but the software recently has been terrible.
I feel like that is a theme in my life.
I accidentally upgraded by iPhone 7 to iOS 11 and now its mostly unusable. The level of lag opening a new application is nuts. Lyft as an example takes 60 to 90 seconds from when I open to it being usable.
Earlier today I opened the Messages app and wanted to take a picture and text it. It took almost 2 minutes for the message app to open, for me to be able to select the person I wanted to message, for that to open and then for the camera to come up. By the time it was ready, the thing I wanted to take a photo of was gone.
It feels like when I stopped using Apple products in the 90s again except now they have a lot more market share and they arent dealing with a signature laptop bursting into flames.
I had a 2011 macbook pro with the 15” screen that I thought could never be topped. Couldn’t justify the increased price for the 2016/2017 model so I went for a thinkpad t460p and loaded kbuntu on it, I’m very happy with the machine in general but there are a few irritances such as photos being synced between my laptop & iPhone no longer happens, its just not as integrated which I do miss.
Had a 2012 non-Retina (but the higher resolution variant) MBP until earlier this year. Had replaced the HDD with an SSD years ago, and upgraded even that to 1TB. Replaced the WiFi/Bluetooth card once it died. Took out the combo drive. Heavy, thick, but still worked great.
I ended up finally swapping out for the T470s. Slim, higher resolution, NVMe, Linux-compatible hardware.
Apple fanboy-ness aside, I own one of these along with a lot of other laptops (Apple and PCs) and out of them all these ones are probably best of the Apple lot in terms of ease of use of the device (not the OS). When the new ones came out with the touch bar and all that it turned me off pretty badly, primarily because of vim and the amount I use the esc key, and just the fact it was just one more overly complex bit of kit that was bound to break. I spend most of my time on an iMac with a “proper” clicky keyboard and when I have to swap to a laptop (for travel, etc…) these macbook pros take me the least amount of time to get to full speed typing/working without stumbles, etc… out of any of them, but saying they’re the best ever made is a bit much.
There are some pretty stellar ISV certified laptops out there that come with amazing specs and nice controls like the Dell Precision series and the Lenovo P50s that can handle more RAM, additional drives, etc… It’s way too hard to call any one single laptop “The best ever made” purely because controls are diverging a fair bit nowadays (Lenovo trackpad vs. apple trackpad) and I think if someone went from for instance a macbook to a lenovo they would instantly hate it because they aren’t used to the keyboard and trackpad style, but that doesn’t mean they’re worse, just different and you have to adjust your habits, when you do you might be surprised at how good these other setups actually are.
The three things that always bothered me about my 17-inch MacBook Pro and why I switched back to Windows are:
[]{}and I needed to press and memorise 3-keys shortcuts like Alt+Ctrl+5 for each of these characters).Other than that I loved the POSIX environment and terminal emulator but these issues bother me too much.
I’m writing this on one of these laptops, and it’s easily one of the best laptops I’ve ever had. I’ve noticed the keyboard is starting to go a bit squiffy on this, but I’ll just replace or repair it when the time comes.
I have to say, the newer Macs don’t excite me at all. If there was a version of this laptop with 32Gb of RAM, I’d consider it when it’s time to replace, but there’s just no real need to replace it otherwise.
I had to replace the keyboard on mine recently (the “e” stopped working, and I wasn’t able to fix it myself). The “authorised” solution is to replace the whole top case, which costs 700-900 New Zealand dollars here. I went with an unauthorised shop which put in a knockoff keyboard for $220. It feels a tiny bit off compared to the original keyboard, but I’m really glad I can now keep this laptop for another couple of years, because it’s great.
My requirements for a laptop are pretty simple, but they’re apparently impossible to meet:
Thus far, I have found nothing that meets these requirements.
I haven’t used one myself, but the laptops from puri.sm look pretty good. A bit of a gamble, though (small company with not much of a track record yet).
Reviews on YouTube have been helpful and reassuring, in my experience.
I’ve had reasonable success with the Asus ZenBook. It’s a total ripoff of the macbook air design, but I’m fine with it. Runs Linux nicely and has reasonable support for OpenBSD (sans trackpad). It’s my daily driver for when I’m at school and can’t use a huge desktop machine like I normally would.
I returned the ZenBook because the fan was so noisy and would start as soon as you thought about moving the mouse. Instead, I got the HP Spectre x360, which was so silent I had to
make -jsomething just to prove to myself that there was a fan. It also looks much better (one of the few laptops that look really good without being a Macbook ripoff).Both seem to run Ubuntu just fine, though I’ve of course tested the Spectre much more.
I use a 2015 Macbook Retina Pro for work, provided by my employer, every day running Windows via Bootcamp. It is a really damn good laptop.
Couldn’t agree more. Successive laptops have been steps down in some way or another - like the horrid squishy keyboard, or the less rugged mechanical design, or removing the Escape key, or or or ….
Couldn’t agree more. Had one of these for work for a couple years, was really happy with it, looked forward to putting off the upgrade cycle as much as possible. Unfortunately managed to screw up the screen with a bad screen wipe (long story on why the company would provide screen wipes capable of removing the coating of a MacBook, but that’s another story.)
The “upgrade” I got (bigger SSD, discrete GPU, a newer CPU) sucked: the screen would flicker when it randomly switched between the integrated and the discrete GPUs, whatever OS X does for deciding when to switch to the discrete GPU would be triggered by IntelliJ running for a few minutes, which in turn made the computer become hotter on the same loads. Finally. capital sin for a laptop: the battery life went down by a solid two to three hours. All in all, it was a downgrade by every measurable metric.
Now, between the new butterfly keyboard (which I’ve had to use on occasion and find appalling) and the “touch bar”, I’m really considering buying my first non-Apple laptop in over half a decade.