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Ask HN: Disappointed by the new Macbook, what alternatives do we have?
124 points by Maran on Oct 31, 2016 | hide | past | favorite | 140 comments
I've been very happy with my 2012 Macbook Pro Retina and was looking forward to a worthy successor. However the unveiling of the new Macbook was a big letdown for me. Everything that made the Macbook "Pro" seems to be removed. Enough has been said about the topic already what I want to do here is look at what alternatives there are.

So my question for you is; Which laptops, around the price point of your average Macbook Pro, come close to the build quality of the Macbook and use hardware that's greatly supported in Linux.

Extra kudos if somebody can recommend me a terminal on-par with iTerm. Out of all my apps I think I would miss iTerm the most.



I asked the same question and read replies to others. Just a quick summary;

- Lenovo has decent laptops. Personally, I'd not touch anything from Lenovo after their shady stuff. (Maybe not an issue on Linux, maybe it is. I don't trust them)

- Dell XPS series are really good but people complain about coil whine, worse battery life compared to MBP and hit/miss trackpad. It might not be that big of a problem. And if you are running in clamshell mode, these are generally no issues. I don't run clamshell though.

- The Razer Blade stuff seems to be great too. They are mostly aimed for gamers but look decent. Someone mentioned about huge display bezels being really huge in person. Gotta see. I can't find any info about them here, maybe they only sell in USA.

- I skipped Asus due to past support experiences with them. Also some smaller vendors due to possible support issues I'd have especially since I'm out of US.


If you don't mind Linux, https://system76.com/laptops has some great machines - the Oryx Pro is a pretty slim, aluminium laptop with much more performance per buck than the MBP.


PC Specialist, Schenker and Tuxedo sell machines based on the same barebones. These are probably cheaper for !US people.


Yeah, in the UK I'd go with SCAN Computers[1] or PC Specialist[2] (SCAN I can personally recommend).

[1] - https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/custom [2] - https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/laptops/


500 internal error, seems the server couldn't handle hackernews


> seems the server couldn't handle hackernews

Who can? :-) It seems to be back now BTW.


Important corrections:

- Lenovo's ThinkPad line has decent laptops. Lenovo's more popular line, Ideapad, which are branded just "Lenovo", are terrible.

- Dell XPS series are good, but if you're looking to run Linux on them, make sure to get the Developer Editions


Can you elaborate? Why are the Ideapads terrible? Why get a Developer Edition?


"Why are the Ideapads terrible?"

They're consumer models, and the ones most likely to be affected by Lenovo's malware shenanigans. Most "PC" OEMs tend to build their business lines better than their consumer lines, and Lenovo's no exception. The Thinkpad line also has a reputation of being friendlier to non-Windows operating systems in general (they're the most-recommended for OpenBSD, for example), while the Ideapad line very much does not.

"Why get a Developer Edition?"

Because they're designed with Linux compatibility in mind, from what I understand.


The IdeaPads I had were not of low quality. They are plastic through and through, but high quality plastic. They feel reasonably solid and a reasonably priced.

Obviously they are not carved from a solid block of magnesium alloy, like ThinkPads used to be.


They do feel solid. But the innards are not as good (e.g.: poor Broadcom Wi-Fi cards, bad power management).

And the ThinkPad units didn't have Superfish or the Win10-only-SSD BIOS lock.


My wife has one, and the trackpads on them are terrible compared to a MBP. I don't know how they compare to other laptops in the current Lenovo line.


The thinkpads have a long, long history of working well with linux and bsd, too long for it to be a coincidence. The ideapads... don't.

"Developer Edition" is Dell's corporatespeak for "we made sure this works with linux".


With IdeaPads it's just totally model dependent. Some models work great with Linux, some don't work at all.


I really wish I could find anything at all that works well with linux, has at least 4G RAM (better 8 or 16), doesn't have a heavy screen , and is no wider than 28cm. Buying laptops has become really, really difficult. </digression>


28 cm width essentially excludes the 11.6" to 13.x" category, which are typically at least ~29 cm wide.

So you're probably looking at a 10.6" netbook.


Well, I'd probably take an 8G 29cm thing over 4G 28cm, but that doesn't seem to matter much, since I can't find any of either. The small ones all seem to either be tablets with a lightweight attachable keyboard (ie. prone to tip backwards) or they have a locked BIOS and can only run chromeos.


Because Ideapads are developed by Chinese teams, with much lower target price points, and are under the management who thought Superfish was a good idea. Thinkpads don't have these problems.


I think the main difference with the developer edition is that it comes with an Intel wireless card. Also maybe some different BIOS settings. And obviously Ubuntu preinstalled.


> Why are the Ideapads terrible?

I was speaking from past experience and my frustration at the poor build quality, poor management, and all the creepy stuff Lenovo has done to laptops in the Ideapad line (Superfish, Win10-only SSD (which they recently backed down from) etc.)

Beyond me, others would tell you that IdeaPad is Lenovo's consumer laptop line, and as such it sees less quality put into it.

> Why get a Developer Edition?

Because those units are built for Linux compatibility, while non–Developer Edition units are hit-and-miss.


not terrible, just thinkpads are built for professionals and can generally take more punishment before they break. I'd assume they also use better compoenents.


iirc the developer edition uses some components from other manufacturers than the standard edition. This is because of driver issues on linux.


Instead of XPSs, we bought Precisions 15 5000 at work [1]. They are basically XPS 15, (virtually indistinguishable apart for the engraving on the bottom), but you can spec them to bits (you can even get a Xeon processor if you want,have them with no OS / Ubuntu). All of us are reasonably happy with them.

[1]: http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/precision-m5510-workstatio...


Another Precision user chiming in. I got one at work and after I updated the Intel video driver, I've had no complaints.


These look very good, thanks for the recommendation.


Lenovo Thinkpad T540p - the worst track pad I have ever used - truly abysmal. Avoid, avoid, avoid!!


Was waiting more than an 4 years for replacing MacBook Pro 2012 which is the last MBP you can upgrade on your own. and finally after seeing the event - went with dell outlet new latitude E5470 with Core i7 6820HQ the same processor used in 15" MBP version selling at $2399 . It has 8gb Ram and SSD for $635. Will add additional 8gb for $40, will receive it tomorrow . I probably would never buy MBP again since there is no bang for buck . would be happy to pay twice the premium for apple but 4 times forget it. They are selling ultra books as pro's for premium . It's more like cheating and milking customers than providing value.


do you mind providing a link? I can only find the E5470 with 8GB but not 16GB


Looks like 16gb is out of stock i dont see it too, you can buy another 8gb one and upgrade to 16gb for $40 from newegg.


some of the Asus machines are pretty good - I had good experiences with a non-ultrabook laptop for the past 5 years.

most of the issues I read about with Asus is regarding the build quality of their ultrabooks (the hinge in particular) and screen issues (yellow cast on some models). Other than that, all Asus stuff I used are good quality and at least my local support is good.


razor sells in the uk and other markets too www.razerzone.com but they cost an arm and a leg


Massive tip if you decide to stay with a < 2015 MacBook Pro.

Open up the laptop and reapply the thermal paste on the CPU with something high quality like Arctic Silver. It really needs redoing after 1-2 years. This will result in a significant improvement to overall performance. Why ? Because when OSX detects that the laptop is overheating it schedules a dummy task e.g. secd or kernel_task to throttle the CPU. Cool the laptop and the throttling stops. Use iStat Menus or top to check for the process.

Takes all of 10 minutes and iFixit can guide you through it. As much of a performance difference as going from HDD->SSD. The other most vital thing to do on OSX since all of the daemons result in lots of random reads (check fs_usage).


This. This. This.

I have "refurbished" 2 MacBook Pros now, and this is part of my process. Max out the RAM, install SSD, replace battery, reapply thermal paste, clean with canned air. When I did this to a 2009 13" MBP that got me through grad school (already had max RAM and an SSD), I found that it ran cooler than I remember it running when I first bought it. Recently, I bought a used 2011 15" MBP (no HDD, swelled up battery, popped out trackpad, missing case screws) for $100. I used an SSD from my desktop that recently became a media server, then spent $110 on 16 GB of RAM, a new battery, and screws. That machine is killing it.

This is one of the things that saddens me about everything after the retina MBP transition: we can no longer do all of these kinds of major performance enhancements on our own, and some of these repairs have become much more difficult.

Edit: I use Noctua NT-H1 because it has excellent thermal characteristics and it isn't electrically conductive so it won't kill your hardware if you get it somewhere you shouldn't.

http://noctua.at/en/nt-h1.html

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/noctua_nt_h1/5.htm

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Noctua/NT-H1/4.html


Is this specific to certain years only? I have a 2012 non-retina and it is great, but apparently certain years had more problems than others. Would you recommend it for my 2012 model too?


As a more reliable way to confirm if you have some thermal problem on an older Mac, download and run Intel Power Gadget. That shows the current frequency of the CPU, and when combined with running some program that puts all cores under load, you can see if the frequency drops below what is designed for.

Be aware it isn't always thermal paste that is the culprit. I had a 2012 Retina 15" MBP that was normally 2.6GHz but would drop down to 1.4GHz. That was purely due to the fans and (tiny) vents getting choked up. Solved by opening and using compressed air to clean, no fiddling with CPU paste.


Not sure. But I suspect it is in the more recent years where the thinner unibody has been required to take on more of the cooling duties. So if you are like me and use your laptop on the bed, on your lap etc then you are by design preventing the laptop from cooling properly.

Everything I've seen says thermal paste is only effective at most a couple of years. It is harder to replace on your 2012 model but not difficult:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Mid...


This is a general issue affecting lots of notebooks from all vendors.


Sure. But what I haven't seen on Windows or Linux is the deliberate high priority scheduling of a dummy process designed to throttle the CPU.


The CPU will throttle itself soon enough after that anyway. The only difference would be that without the kernel throttling it earlier, it can get a bit hotter and last a bit longer before throttling.


Opportunities:

- A Thunderbolt 3 dock that has all the missing ports in new MacBook Pro

- Lenovo, HP, Asus release properly supported notebook with Linux similar to Dell XPS Developer edition. Makes desktop Linux available across PC industries.

- Microsoft release Surface Pro and Surface Book with Mubuntu (MS version of Ubuntu, since MS already has working relationship with Canonical)

- Cloud service via emulator that allows developer to build, test and submit iOS apps without actually owning a Mac

- Google release Pixel Book which runs a brand new OS that is ChromeOS+Android hybrid.

We need:

- Adobe releases Photoshop & Lightroom for Linux

- Microsoft releases Office for Linux

- A few major games for Linux. Makes Linux a game platform.

- One or two major Mac developers develop for Linux

- More developer using Electron and React Native for Ubuntu

But we will be back to the same by spring 2017 when Apple refreshes MacBook Pro with new CPU and cheaper price.


Thunderbolt 3 dock coming soon: http://www.belkin.com/us/p/P-F4U095/


That is actually pretty neat, I've been wanting a macbook dock for ages and this is almost that...


No terminal is on par with iTerm. I was using Linux and *BSD for years, used many terminals, and of all iTerm is bread and butter (and with that font rendering and retina screen, nothing comes close). I would recommend to evaluate your needs, but be objective! If you can live with 16GB of RAM (I can, I do not do anything that would require me to use 32GB of RAM) then buy last year model. I have it, amazing machine.

And maybe it would be better to hold on to your MBP, and buy Chromebook, at least to test the water with Linux (or whatever OS you want to use). Install them on small machine, setup few essential programs to you and use them for few weeks. Why am I telling you this? Well I really appreciate some things on macOS, which will keep me glued to it for few more years at least. (iTerm is one of those things)


I use iTerm daily but I don't think I get it. What makes iTerm so great?


After I used many of dated terminals, everything from xterm to urxvt (was ok), to more modern ones like termite (this one I liked very minimal), I really appreciated everything about iTerm. The amount of GUI customization is insane, plus you can configure everything about from key bindings to mouse, arrangement, etc etc. I really liked it how it doesn't get in your way. Splits are amazing, it is the only terminal where clipboard has worked perfectly with tmux,zsh,vim/emacs combo out of the box. I was really impressed how little configuration it required.


It's just a really solid app that is constantly updated.

Very fast, beautifully rendered text, tabs/profiles/split screen are well implemented etc.


What exactly is it that makes you think iTerm is so good? I've started using a MBP after years on ubuntu and I don't think which terminal I am using makes much difference. All I am going to do is open tmux anyway.


I commented above. Ascetics wise macOS has better font rendering. (A lot of nice community made themes for iTerm too). But clipboard works flawlessly out of the box with tmux/zsh/vim/emacs, TrueColor support is awesome too, splits and tabs are amazing and work nice (I know that tmux has something similar to offer, but I really like tabs in iTerm, and I use it in combination with tmux). Amount of customization is staggering really, and app overall always performs well, no latency or lag whatsoever, and is really stable too. While on Ubuntu things were crashing, a lot!


You should checkout hyper https://hyper.is/


Why should I, iTerm is native app, this is JS.


KTerm of KDE is quite similar to iTerm2. Using them both bot not that much iTerm's special features.


Just got a Thinkpad T460s. Practically the same dimensions and specs of a X1 Carbon but with replaceable memory and disk. Can easily be made to have 20GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD, and if someone makes a 32GB DIMM could potentially go up to 36GB of RAM although that's not advertised as supported. Everything works in Linux just fine and the 2560x1440 screen looks great.


T460s only has partially replaceable memory, some of it is soldered on. And god help you if that fails outside warranty, spare Thinkpad mainboards usually cost more than a new laptop.


I'm curious about the mother board comment. I have a t430, and rebuilt it the motherboard cost me 30$ via ebay. Searching for the t430s I'm seeing about 40 -> 80 on ebay. I'd think that by the time you need to replace the mainboard, it'd be at more attainable levels on the second hand market.


Third party mainboards are either used (and you don't know whether and for how long they'll work) or not initialized (throwing errors during boot). Factory replacements via Lenovo's spare parts service cost you $400+ for simple models and $800+ for dedicated graphics models.


RAM is pretty reliable so I'm not really worried. One thing I just realized though is that 20GB is probably the absolute max for this machine. Since there are 4GB on the board and the chipset can only do 32GB it's pretty likely that 4+16GB will end up being the maximum.

I've opened the machine and it's a shame they don't just give us 2 DIMM slots and 2 (or 4) M.2 slots so you can just splurge on some more RAM+SSD goodness.


If the T460 had the same display options available, it would be the perfect alternative: Two DIMM slots, two mass storage slots, two batteries, and still quite compact.


Seems slightly bulkier and 20% heavier, but that's not too bad. I wonder if the T460s panel works fine in the T460 if you're willing to do the swap.


It will, but you'll void your warranty, and it's annoying that Lenovo doesn't offer it themselves – all their notebooks are built to order anyway, so they're actively hurting themselves by artificially constraining their customers.


What about the T460p? Looks like it has the WQHD option but I can't seem to find info regarding the RAM (soldered or not).


The T460p has fully expandable RAM (almost 5 pounds), but it's a lot bulkier than the other variants (but somehow has smaller batteries), and for inexplicable reasons uses inferior materials. (Pure ABS plastic like on L/E series Thinkpads, not fibre-reinforced.)

Lenovo's model policy is somewhere between "annoying" and "fucking insane", every laptop is seemingly made by a different team and none ever talks to each other.


The '-s' models are all designed to be slimmer counterparts to the non-'-s' models. Apart from that, the T460 should be identical to the T460s; and I'd recommend the former instead of the latter for the same reason you mention.


Should, but isn't: The T460 has for inexplicable reasons no high-resolution (WQHD) display option, unlike the T460s and T460p.

Lenovo's model policy (23 different Thinkpad models this year with dozens of options each) is really insufferable.


I'm happily on a T460s as well. The nice thing about the T4x0 series is that they're used by lots of Redhat employees so driver issues tend to be resolved quickly.


I mostly used Macs for about ten years, but I don't like the direction the ecosystem is taking (cloud, app store, etc.), so recently switched to an XPS 13 (developer edition) running Ubuntu. (I actually also gave an SP4 a good chance for a few months, but couldn't get on with Windows.) It's pretty decent (both the laptop and Ubuntu) - sometimes wish the display was brighter or speakers louder, but depends on the environment. Nice size, bit heavy, but feels solid. Wifi was a bit dodgy before updating to 16.10 - seems fine now though. The HD screen is nice (once you change the scale setting; there's a problem with the touch screen not working after sleep though). I've never been much of a keyboard snob, but this keyboard is so much nicer than a MBA.


Actually the keyboard is one of things I don't like in XPS 13. Feedback is too weak, escpecially for shift and ctrl. I don't expect mechanical keyboard from laptop, but I liked it in Vostro more. I've never used Macbook for a longer time, so I don't have a comparision.


Just making sure you meant to say what you did; did you say the xps13 was a bit heavy? I thought it was rather light.


I think this is more about feeling heavier than it looks. Pretty sure it's heavier than my 13" MBA though (despite being smaller, area-wise).


One thing I never liked about my Macbook is that there is no option for a matte screen. So I consider switching and finally getting a matte one now:

http://www.productchart.com/laptops/sets/1

I will replace Windows with Linux. I heard Thinkpads are good for this. But the Dell XPS series looks very compelling too.


You might want to be more specific, about the "pro" part that you want which is no longer in the MBP. For instance others have pointed out that the 16GB limitation is in all notebooks which use the same intel chipset and low voltage ram, so you'll have to sacrifice battery life for more memory. That's fine for some folks but not for others.


you'll have to sacrifice battery life for more memory

Or get a bigger battery. Not all laptops are stuck with a non-removable battery that must fit a certain size.


Then you're sacrificing space. Look, that's a perfectly fine tradeoff, but OP didn't mention what tradeoffs he was willing to make.

For me: I would rather have a smaller and lighter computer since I travel. The battery doesn't have to last more than 5 hours since I'm either out and traveling or at home and plugged in, but if it is plugged in it has to be able to drive pixels on an external monitor.


I honestly don't know what everyone is complaining about WRT the Dell XPS line. I have a refurbished Dell XPS 13 (Skylake) -- NON-Developer Edition even -- and I'm very happy running Arch Linux without any headaches. It's a great laptop with excellent battery life and performance. I don't experience coil-whine at all. (Although, I've heard the rumor that the coil whine is a bigger deal on the XPS 15.)

Naturally, the Arch Linux community has an extremely helpful wiki to help you get set up:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_(2016)


I'd also miss iTerm.

Have you looked at the Dell XPS 13 Dev edition, the Razer Blade Pro, the Lenovo X1 Carbon, Lenovo T Series, or the Asus UX305F?


What about a 2015 MBP? I also have a 2012 model, with a little water damage, and am seriously thinking of upgrading to 2015 and then giving Apple one more upgrade cycle to come to its senses.


My guess is there may be decent sales around thanksgiving as vendors look to clear last year's stock. I'm mostly hoping saner people prevail at apple too. Or you could learn to type on an ipad, which is clearly the future of computing!


Saner people did prevail at Apple. That's why for a laptop that typically lasts 5+ years they went with USB-C to replace the other dozen antiquated ports.


Some of us were using those antiquated ports.


I know. I'm one of them.

But I will always applaud Apple for when they do things like this because through sheer attrition they will move the industry forward.

The iMac is largely what made USB a success. And I am hoping this will make a single connector world a success.


A single-connector world is not an end in itself. The reason anyone finds it appealing is because it means people won't have to carry a forest of adapters and connectors, or worry about incompatible devices.

But that's what Apple is now forcing us to do if we buy their new laptop. USB-A is going to be around for years to come, as is HDMI. I'm not going to throw out my extremely expensive Thunderbolt display because it uses a heretical connector. I am not going to refuse to speak at a conference because the projector doesn't work with my new machine.

The basic requirement of a professional machine is that it let us get our work done. This is just design wank.


As a wag on twitter said -- let's call it a courage of cables that we can haul around with us!


There was nothing wrong with keeping a magsafe port, or throwing one thunderbolt 2 connector in there. That doesn't preclude a bunch of usbc ports.

ps -- for me personally, we're discussing a bonus $500 of cables/adapters/chargers that Apple is blithely demanding I replace.


copying my comment from here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12832547

You can buy a dell xps 15 today that comes with: 3840 x 2160 display / 1tb pcie solid state disk / nvidia gtx 960m (crucial for developing cuda programs and prototyping deep learning on your laptop) / 32g ram. For $2340 (ten percent off coupon at the top of the page). I'm not sure if this link will work: http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/productdetails/xps-15-9550-la...

And this thing comes with regular usb ports and an hdmi port instead of usb-c nonsense so I don't have to immediately drop $250 in dongles just to keep the capabilities I already have. (And one usb-c port).

here's a detailed guide to getting with ubuntu from a year ago: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2301071

it appears that it only works modestly well. So if you buy this, you're probably going to have to live with Windows or the issues in the above thread.

========

My personal plan is to buy a 1-ish year old mac and cross my fingers that someone builds a well-supported powerful linux laptop by 2018. Good sleep/power management support seems to be a common problem.


I'm in the same situation and right now leaning towards a beefy hackintosh desktop + maybe one of the small macbooks. It's such a pain though.


Would using one effect your Apple Developer status if you are seen using one of these?


This looks to be the direction I'll be heading too.


I've been using an HP Spectre X360 15" with a 4K touchscreen which is truly amazing. The only downside is that the one USB 3 port is not a thunderbolt port, making it not all that useful unless you get a dongle that allows you to plug in a regular USB cable.

Other than that, I've been enjoying it immensely and it made me stick to Windows at a time at which I really wanted to switch to Linux or MacOS.


If you want more power Lenovo T. If you want something closer to air, Lenovo X.


I'm really skeptical about Lenovo because of the proprietary software issues they've had, even read things about bioses with sketchy stuff in them which couldn't be flashed and such.


Lenovo has (at least) two lines of laptop products, one consumer and one enterprise.

The consumer line is shit. It's branded just "Lenovo", but Lenovo themselves call it "IdeaPad".

The enterprise line is good. It's branded "ThinkPad", or "Lenovo ThinkPad", and every unit in this line is bound to have the label "ThinkPad" on its body prominently displayed. The two series of laptops your parent referred to are both ThinkPad series.

And the sketchy stuff you refer to all happened in the IdeaPad line, no ThinkPads were affected. Lenovo has historically run the ThinkPad division separately with some autonomy granted.


Op asked about a laptop with linux compatibility. I'm assuming that's going to be installed from scratch without any marketing/upselling software from Lenovo.


Erm which proprietary software issues are you referring to?


This http://thehackernews.com/2015/08/lenovo-rootkit-malware.html


If you want absolute power - Lenovo P50 (though P50s is closer to MBPr)


P50s is just dual-core.

P50 is quite thick, 24-29mm. I'm using T440p and the height is a bit annoying when typing.

In addition to the missing quad-core slim models, another annoyance with Lenovo is that at least the online configurators are still offering just 512GB SSD. It is of course possible to throw in what you want, but if it is not official Lenovo stuff, then it is not covered by the onsite warranty.


I used to be a big ThinkPad guy, but I'm spoiled now. The thought of having to work with a Lenovo trackpad depresses me.


Use the trackpoint instead? Honestly the trackpoint on TPs has been a major, maybe the biggest, deterrent for me to abstain from ultrabooks.


Lenovo... works really well. Ubuntu + Lenovo can last many years.


I find Razer Blade laptop as a good replacement for Macbook pro. Also Pc Specialist has custom laptops - https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/laptops/


The options I am considering as substitutes for the new mbp 13" are:

- The new razer blade stealth: Great built quality, kaby lake, usb-c/thunderbolt 3, great screen, reasonable price, although im not sure Ubuntu would work out of the box.

- Xiaomi Air 13: This is not really a competitor but im really tempted to try it. It is cheap (less than 1k) it looks like having a nice built quality, fast ram, good i5 processor, dedicated nvidia GPU ( so may be some acceleration for training small deep learning models). USB-C, USB3, HDMI, Ubuntu works out of the box. CONS: you have to import it.


What's wrong with your current laptop?


My first thought. Do you really need to change because you broke your macbook, or do you want to change because its "trendy" ?


Few problems:

CPU is slowing down lately, even switching tabs in Chrome sometimes takes a 1sec to actually render the page.

Disk is getting too small. I use a lot of VMs for work and I never have enough space to run them all.

Laptop is dead, if I replace it I will be without a laptop for weeks according to Apple.

I let it drop once making the fan very noisy, not really a problem just annoying.


So, you've dropped the laptop and the fan became noisy, which would also lead to CPU throttling because if the fan isn't working right, CPU is going to overheat and your laptop is going to suffer as the result of this.

Did you even take the back off to try to reseat it or clean up the laptop? You can try to take it to an authorized Apple repair shop to see if they can re-seat the fan/clean up the fans for you.

I have same '12 rMBP and the performance is just as snappy as it was back in '12 and I've never reinstall OS either, so it's all consistent and snappy.

I have no plans to upgrade this because there's nothing else that comes close to replacing it right now, not even '16 rMBP.

As for the disk, I put my VMs on external SSDs, works great. Certainly cheaper than replacing the laptop and easier to upgrade every year to more storage.


Lenovo T or X series, ASUS Zenbook series.


I love my Aorus X3: http://www.aorus.com/Product/Features/X3%20Plus%20v6

Portability, power and build quality are all excellent. Battery life isn't up to MacBook standards, but you get a good 4 to 5 hours on a single charge which is still fairly usable. The trackpad isn't as nice as a MacBook either, but it's good enough. Everything else about it has the MacBook Pro completely outclassed in my opinion.


I am a Lenovo Thinkpad user x230 specifically. Heavily criticised by people who love their X220's but it works great for me 12" form factor and packs a punch, separate slot for SSD if you want one and loads of ports. I have 2 actually. One runs my home server. I dropped out of the main stream sphere mainly because of this carrot donkey driven eco-system (Who knows where they are taking us). I am quite happy with my Arch Linux deployment. Its decent for gaming too.


This isn't really a recommendation, but if I could have it my way, I'd take this computer, except with OS X:

https://system76.com/laptops/oryx

• 15.6" 1080p IPS LED-backlit Display

• NVIDIA GeForce 1070 8GB

• 3.5 GHz i7-6700HQ

• 32 GB DD4 at 2400MHz (upgradeable to 64 GB)

• OS Drive: 512 GB NVMe (PCI with 2600MB/s read and 1600 MB/s write)

• 2nd Drive: 2.5" 1 TB SSD

• 1080p HD Webcam

• Kensington® Lock port

• 1x Gigabit Ethernet

• 1× HDMI

• 2× Mini DisplayPort

• 2× USB 3.1 Type-C

• 3× USB 3.0 Type-A

• Stereo Speakers

• Stereo Mic

• Headphone Jack

• Mic Jack

• S/PDIF

• SD Card Reader

• Ubuntu 16.04.1

$2,870

Obviously the dream would be for it to look like a MacBook Pro, but I would give up the sleek case if I could run OS X reliably on that sucker.


* off-center trackpad (of unknown quality) is right there a no-go for me...


I'm absolutely loving my SP4 as my main laptop for a couple of months. It has enough juice to be able to do most things well, amazing display and weighs like nothing.


What's the use case?

If it's just for general web development, my plan is to buy a used 2015 MBP, but with AppleCare until mid-2018 or later, and re-roll the dice in two years.


I'm running a HP Spectre 13. Couldn't be happier


They look great actually. Are you running Linux or Windows?

I've been a Mac user for the last few years, but spent the few before that as a ThinkPad + GNU/Linux guy. I could see myself going back to GNU/Linux on the desktop one day.


I'm on Windows 10, with a VM linux (when it launched, driver support was buggy to say the least, and I've not been bothered enough to try adding linux again)


What is so special about iTerm? Features, font rendering?

For features and portability, I can warmly recommend SecureCRT[0], you won't find a more capable terminal app anywhere.

[0] https://www.vandyke.com/products/securecrt/index.html


The problem with that terminal (and lots of other with 'loads of features) is that it tries to reinvent the wheel. Why would I need SSH, file transfers, command editors, etc, when all of that is done by the shell itself? If I need ssh I just run 'ssh' on my terminal, and that's it. If I need to edit a command I press Ctrl-X + E and bash/zsh shows me a command editor (vim or emacs or nano, whatever you want).

What, in my opinion, makes iTerm good is that it doesn't try to redo all the things that shells do, but instead tries to give you better access to that shell. For example, one thing which is surprisingly difficult to find in terminal programs: a drop-down terminal. In iTerm, I press Cmd + Shift + 1 and a terminal appears in the top of the screen. Quick access, quick hide, and always there to do whatever quick thing I need to do. Another feature: no space waste. iTerm does not have toolbars, buttons or anything, it's all terminal because that's all I need. Only a tab bar with multiple tabs, and if you want a title bar on split mode (optional, I personally have it disabled).

It also complements the shell in system integration: one thing which is incredibly useful is the trigger system. For example, when I'm waiting for a host to come up, I just run "ping whatever" and hide the window. When the text "64 bytes from... " appears, a trigger I configured fires and shows me an OS X notification. You can also highlight text in the terminal or do any other custom action, which can be very useful.


I like the ability to easily have multiple panes without having to learn tmux.


I find that Terminator solves this problem.

You can control it with the mouse and the keybindings are much closer in simplicity to iterm than tmux.

https://linux.die.net/man/1/terminator

Check it out :-)


Try Byobu (http://byobu.co/) it's a convenience package on top of tmux or screen, your choice.


I have March 2015 MB 2.9GHz with 8GB Ram. Working cool and I don't guess I'd need up-gradation


Recently bought an Entroware Apollo (https://www.entroware.com/store/laptops). Amazing device, if you don't mind Linux and are in the UK.


I've been struggling with the same question, ending up sticking with the MBPs.

Resell value, build quality, battery life, weight are all factors that other manufacturers can't match. I really wish they'd released something better though.


Just will left it here https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book


I bought a HP zbook studio G3, looks nice, not heavy and can deal with 32GB RAM ;-).


XMG ( https://www.mysn.de ) offers custom, fully configurable high-end laptops. Take a look if you really want high performance without compromises.


Disappointed by the new Macbook? Try the old Macbook.


The Dell developer edition laptops are really excellent machines. I've used the M3800 and the XPS13 and found them both to be great.


I'm not a Mac User but I know that the Dell XPS 15 is a decent notebook with a very good keyboard and all the connectors you need.


Damn near anything. For the markup on equivalent specs that Apple commands, you can often get two laptops from other manufacturers.


That's not really true, if you configure equivalent rMBP and Thinkpad, the Thinkpad is going to cost you more.


For most things, my C720 Chromebook runs Ubuntu and handle any tasks I need. Don't equate price with utility ;-)


Whoever builds an easy hackintosh with metabox level specs will have my business


see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12815183


Dell XPS 15 (With touch screen retina style display).


the zenbooks look like a good alternative a


So what made MB "Pro"? SD card slot? Height? Weight? Absence of TouchBar? People complain about 16GB RAM. Does your current MPB has more?


What made the MB "Pro", if memory serves right, it was filled with components that represented the state of the art when it was released. Best screen, latest generation of CPU, PCIe SSDs, etc... The best you could possibly get, in a sturdy, well designed machine, coming with an OS that just works.

In 2013, some company even found that the best performing Windows laptop was a MBP (!). [1]

[1]: http://www.zdnet.com/article/want-the-most-reliable-windows-...


The GPUs were never state of the art on Mac laptops, and they don't matter for those that just use iTerm + Emacs/Vi.


This is supposed to be a discussion of MBP alternatives. There are plenty of other threads to discuss the merits of the new Macs.


> People complain about 16GB RAM. Does your current MPB has more?

That's the point - the new generation should allow for more than previous. Why would be your motivation for purchase, to get exactly the same thing you have now?




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