I've been a Mac user for over a decade but I'm lacking enthusiasm towards the recent wave of computers that Apple released (the disappointment started at least two or three years ago).
Gone is the advantage they had with the first Intel based Macbook Pros in terms of quality and durability (Windows wasn't great also at the time and I was tired of Linux on the desktop).
My 2012 Macbook Pro 13" is still working well, a testament of such quality but... "times are a changing".
My feeling is that Apple has neglected their computers to focus on the smartphones. Nothing wrong with that, they are a private company, they can focus on whatever product they want.
My computer is starting to show its age, so I'm thinking about changing it in 2019.
Thanks to some discussions on dev.to, some articles and the Windows Subsystem for Linux I'm keeping an open mind on the idea of switching back to a PC and Windows 10.
I have to admit that I'm a little scared about going back to Windows. I hated Windows for a long time as a user and everytime I'm in front of a Windows computer my initial reaction now is more or less "how do I operate this thing? What happens if I click this? Do they still have viruses?". I firmly believe macOS is much simpler to use but if millions of people are fine with Windows, I'm sure I'll survive too I guess.
Yesterday I also watched this review from one of my favorite youtubers, Sara Dietschy, and I was quite impressed:
(She's been slowly switching away from Apple laptops and workstations as she mostly does video editing)
Today I tried to compare the Dell XPS laptops (13" and 15") with equivalent configurations of MacBook Pros and well... MacBook Pros prices are a little too much in my opinion.
This is a comparison table I made with Notion:
Dell XPSs are 1549€ and 1769€, MacBook Pros are 2270€ and 2417€. 700€ of difference 😱 And Dell laptops are expandable too, so you can put 32 GB of RAM and increase storage in the future.
The biggest hardware quirk of the Dell XPS is the placement of the webcam (at the bottom!?), but MacBook Pros have that ghastly touch bar and the weird butterfly keyboard people like to complain about. Dell XPS 15" model, for almost 700€ less, has a 4K touchscreen, a SD card and... different types of ports (requiring less adapters and dongles).
Do you think 2018 MacBook Pros models are overpriced? Am I missing something?
Oldest comments (99)
They are overpriced, you're absolutely right. This is the reason why I have always used only *BSD/Linux boxes, though I'll get MacBook for development from my new employer. But I wouldn't buy it, it's not worth it.
At this point, the next time I'm due for an upgrade from my employer I'm just going to ask for a Linux laptop instead -- my dotfiles will transfer better, I'll only have to deal with one keyboard layout, and it'll save them some money too.
Am in the same boat and have been considering shifting from Mac to Windows for a while now. The Mac's are too expensive, and I hope Windows 10 is good enough to make the switch not be painful.
I will most likely make the switch, but I think I will mostly miss the better support for command line tools in Mac that come pretty much out of the box. On windows 10 the command line still seems quite backwards.
Interested in hearing what other laptop makes/models are worth considering.
What about trying some of the Linux/BSD distros? The development on Win machines is pain, at least for me.
I have had some experience using Ubuntu on my personal laptop but that was over 10 years ago. All of my recent Linux experience has been just with command line on EC2 instances. For command line tool support, I agree it is great. But I haven't looked much into the GUIs, IDEs, and other development tools support software. I also end up handling some design files, so I do need to be able to run Photoshop, Illustrator, Zeplin, and few other softwares - there may be alternatives to these on Linux but I doubt they'll meet the bar...
There might be, but make sure you can export to formats that do not break the chain of work. If a designer sends you something and you have to send it back I mean.
Huh. I always thought it was "MacBooks Pro", like "Fathers-in-law".
"Macbook Pro" is the whole product name whereas "in-law" is effectively an adjective on father. But I don't think grammar is quite the point. :)
But people shorten it to "MacBook", and "Pro" is short for "professional". So "MacBook Pros" logically expands to MacBook Professionals (which makes me think of the Genius Bar). Anyway, I seem to be in the minority.
He, I shorten it to pro because I own a Macbook.
If you can deal with Windows, why not use a Windows machine? To me, the pricing on the Macs includes the fact that it runs Mac OS (without the hackintosh hassle), and that's my preferred OS, so it isn't overpriced.
If you want a Mac and are price sensitive, consider going with an Apple refurbished one. My current MBP (2014) was a refurbished one from earlier in the year. I couldn't tell it was refurbished. Other than the price, it was essentially a new machine.
It's a combination of factors: the prices, the issues, the lack of expandability and so on.
I haven't decided yet, I wanted to note the difference between similar configurations and start a discussion.
My current Mac is refurbished as well, refurbished Macs are a possible option, you're right. Thanks for reminding me :)
I cannot speak about the specs but I keep hearing all around me of broken new gen mac books (ones with display instead of F keys).
I'm not a fan of the "touchbar" on the MacBook machines. To compensate, I attach a real keyboard to the machine and use that instead. (Unicomp PC Keyboard, with buckling spring mechanism, which what IBM used in their classic Model M keyboard.)
I also don't like their butterfly mechanism (2nd gen), but I dislike most laptop keyboards anyway. The Dell XPS 13 doesn't feel too bad, reminded me of the IBM Thinkpad, which had an acceptable mechanism.
The MacBook trackpads are the best in the business. Yet even though they're as good as it gets, I still find them to be abysmal. I have to have a mouse. Not an Apple mouse, but an actual usable mouse like from Microsoft or Logitech.
How good is Dell XPS trackpad compared to the Macbook's?
I don't think there is a comparison, the Mac trackpads feel like an integral part of the machine, and the XPS felt like any other high end PC laptop, but still bends with the case. The haptic feedback is just incomparable on the Mac.
Thanks!
Yeah, I'm writing this here on a MacBook Pro 2017. I had serious problems with a few of the keys after just two months of use. They were stuck because of dirt. So I had to carefully lift them in order to clean them. The keys are so delicate that you need to read tutorials about how to properly get them out without breaking them. And there's even a way to permanently damage the underlying butterfly mechanism that requires a full replacement.
And guess what? I broke two of the keys, and I followed that tutorial. I was lucky that only the key cap broke. Could have been worse but I better not become a surgeon. So in the end I had to buy replacement keys because the broken ones couldn't be attached anymore.
The most annoying part: the noise. Every single key press is as loud and obnoxious as possible, kinda like: hey look at me, I'm here, using a Macbook Pro!
A friend of mine told me that his entire department was all of a sudden getting equipped with Macbook Pros, and that the noise from typing was driving him nuts.
Well if you could afford it, you can get a Thinkpad for a work laptop running Linux instead of Windows 1.
If your gonna carry it around I just stick with an ultrabook from Asus which does sort of looks like a cheaper version of MacBook Air due to its weight, design and long battery life.
Thanks Max, your suggestion is perfectly valid but I feel I've failed to add some key information in my comparison.
I didn't talk about Linux in the post because Linux is not really an option for me as a desktop day-to-day operating system. Mostly because I don't like it (love it as server though :D) and because most of the non-coding software I use (Adobe's for example) doesn't really work on it.
Sorry, I should have been clearer in the original post!
Maybe Thinkpads are a valid alternative with Windows 10? I didn't really check them out, just did a comparison between one PC model and MacBook Pros.
Ahh... it's a shame, yes it's a really great brand to consider if you're really looking into move out of macs into windows as a company laptop but I don't spend much of my time in windows to understand if it's really that great as I work in Linux all the time.
Based on my colleagues and boss experiences who brought it previously, they like it enough that we were allocated a ThinkPad as part of our development machine.
Also depends if you are going for very portable (the 13" versions) or more horsepower (say, the 15" versions).
To me, the portability is the overwhelming single biggest criterion. If I get a more chutzpah laptop, I might as well just get a desktop machine, because it ain't going anywhere anyway. My 15" and 17" and 19" laptops have rarely left the desk they're tethered to (tethered with external monitors, printers, hubs, real keyboards, a mouse, copper ethernet...).
So for my needs, I'd either get a Dell XPS 13 Developers Edition, or a MacBook Air.
The only problem I have with the Dell in general is that I have to be able to run Xcode on it, and I have to be able to build for macOS and run macOS applications. (At some point, I may need to build for iOS and run/debug in iOS VM. But not today.) On that point, the Dell option becomes less viable. Not Dell's fault, just the way it is.
They're tools. If they do what you need them to do, then they are good tools. If they don't do what you need them to do, then they are inadequate for the need.
Sure, I put both sizes in the comparison for this very reason. The 700€ difference is in both cases though :D
Yeah, I feel you. It also depends on what you develop on, correct. I only installed XCode because Flutter doctor tool kept bugging me about it, but I've never opened it. Still, I can probably live without it. My comparison is mostly about the hardware price. I've not even started making a list of the various tools and programs to see if I could "safely" migrate. I really don't know what's going on in the Windows world, except for WSL because we all talk about it :D
Agreed!
Yeah, 4K is nice but it's not a selling point, I'd rather close the lid and use an external monitor anyway.
I'm sure Ubuntu support is quite good, but I don't really like Linux as a desktop OS and I have gear and software that won't work on it.
Thanks for the suggestion! I would keep it in mind in case I get a separate "work computer" (but I've managed so far with only one computer and a backpack to carry it).
I have a very similar situation to deal with. My 2012 MBP-Retina is not enough for my needs, and I was looking into upgrading.
You've raised good points, my biggest concern is how well will I work on a Linux or Windows machine?
What is the actual cost of the learning curve to switch to Linux or Windows machines, set it up for your needs, get it to the level that these machines work for you and help you do better, and not you working around their limitations?
Probably the only way to answer that question is with research. You're the only one that knows which software and tools you need inside and outside development. Make a list of the major things you need and see how well they work on Linux and Windows.
These might help:
If you use the terminal at all, a lot of the concepts will transfer more or less directly (OSX is based on BSD Unix, which is a near relative of Linux). Instead of /Users/you you'll have /home/you, instead of launchd you have the much nicer systemd, and most distros have a proper package manager built in. The graphical interface is effectively a matter of taste with Linux; you can install and run any of dozens of different window managers, and most are very customizable.
Yay, unpopular opinion incoming :-D
I think I mentioned somewhere else that I switched from Mac to a Windows 10 workstation fairly recently.
I also used Linux desktop (Gnome, KDE) for about 10 years. And I had a constant love-hate relationship with it. Overall I felt like being part of an eternal, never-ending beta test. Before that I went through several iterations of Windows, and I also remember (not so fondly) the MS-DOS era.
Out of all operating systems and desktop environments I've been using in my life Mac OS X is by far my favorite. I like the ease of use, I love the thought, effort, polish and creativity developers put into their tools and applications for Mac OS X. I do not quite see that on the Windows platform (just yet). Tools like Paw that are unparalleled, extremely well designed, feature rich and completely blow Postman out of the water. There is no replacement for that on Windows.
There is also nothing like Alfred, nothing like Pastebot or programmer-friendly really good clipboard managers. Or quirky and strangely useful tools like Strukt.
Also the situation for good, stable terminal emulators that do not make your eyes bleed is pretty dire on Windows 10. There is Cmdr. It's OK. The UI is dated and ugly but it gives you probably the closest experience to opening up a terminal on Mac or Linux.
But it also has bugs when you SSH into a remote and do anything that is interactive and updates the screen buffer. It just glitches out and you need to close and open it again. Also do not try to resize your Cmdr window. Same issue.
I spent a good week downloading and evaluating Windows terminal emulators. The only ones that look good, polished and modern are implemented using Electron and are noticeably slow and not really all that mature.
There are a few Mac developers who start reaching out to Windows, but their efforts are very early stages.
I built a Threadripper workstation with 16 cores and 32GB RAM. I would assume the hardware is not really the bottleneck here (even though focus has been traditionally on intel CPUs). But there are simple operations that are inherently slow on Windows. Trivial things like deleting, copying or moving a file. I think the file system is just not well optimized. It's a jarring experience coming from Mac.
I'm OK now with developing on Windows 10 but getting comfortable was a fight with many compromises. Sure the ways of Windows are different and there are many ways to skin a cat. But I miss the Unix-y way and POSIX compliance in development. I primarily use the terminal for many things. In order to get some Unix-y flavor here you either have to use Cygwin (and I couldn't get to run reliably 100%) or WSL (Linux subsystem). Both are tacked on. Both cannot properly interoperate with Windows-native programs and features.
The WSL was also a constant source of pain for my team last year. It had bugs that would cause file system related issues, especially when reaching from WSL into the Windows file system (e.g. work on a checked out git repo). It caused undeletable "ghost" files only a restart could sort out. These issues are probably fixed by now. But there are other issues with WSL. For example WSL sets Windows files and folders to "case sensitive" on write access, which is not the Windows-native way of doing things.
The Visual C++ compiler for example cannot find source files that are flagged as case-sensitive, so if you happen to have a C++ project checked out on your Windows file system and happen to access it from WSL brace yourself for potential problems.
I personally do not see much value in WSL. It's quite slow, does not interoperate properly with Windows-native applications (unless you keep it 100% separate for specific tasks such as running servers or SSHing into remotes). And quite frankly, you might as well just use a Raspberry Pi and SSH into that thing instead. Or use VirtualBox.
Thank you very much Thomas, a lot of very detailed information!
Another factor in the choice, that I didn't really think about yet, is how much adjustments I'd have to make both in development and in normal "desktop-y" usage.
Lots to think about, as usual the perfect system doesn't exist (well, it's macOS with less stupid hardware choices, at least for me :D)
Yes, I gave it a good proper thought ahead of time and went on a hunt mainly in hopes of finding 1:1 replacements. It's impossible :-/ I had to adjust and do things in a different way. The only things I work with which are available with the same feature set for Windows are:
The ones I used daily that do not map are:
At least there is Chocolatey as a suitable Windows replacement for Homebrew
I do not like Windows built-in mail and calendar clients. The calendar for example doesn't allow you to change the target calendar / target account of an existing event. Something that can be done with ease using Fantastical. I'm using em Client instead and I have to say I'm quite happy with it. It's quite customizable and does everything I need to do.
"Overall I felt like being part of an eternal, never-ending beta test."
So true. I love Linux, but there's always that nagging question in the back of my mind, "will this work?" I really want a machine that I can just boot up and know it will function the way I need it to all the time. But, on the other hand, I suppose this is computing, after all. What would be the fun in that?
Yeah but it shouldn't, we are power users, we can adapt, we use computers in a different way than most people but why should we? When I'm done with my editor and my terminal I just want to use the computer, not fiddle with it :-) I don't find any joy by endlessly chasing the perfect setup or reinstalling things over and over, but that's just me, others are more keen to having that and maybe automating or perfecting their setup as uniquely as possible.
When I switched to macOS it was exactly because I was tired of asking myself "will this work", and that was 12 years ago, the fact that you're still asking this question it's not encouraging :D
I've had a MacBook for years, got a Dell XPS from work, put Linux on it, but since then I've changed distro for at least 10 times. It's always love/hate... I can honestly say I'll go for a more expensive MacBook pro for my next laptop. The 700 dollar extra is worth the ease of life haha. It's kind of a first world problem, but I honestly really miss osx. It just always worked for me.
Yeah, that's a valid reason. If tomorrow I walk into a store and get a new MB Pro, I can just come home, attach it to my time machine, wait an hour for the restore and keep on working like nothing ever happened.
If I switch to another hardware maker and another operating system I'm going to have to spend some time adjusting, finding equivalent software, finding an alternative to time machine, learn a new set of bugs to work around, have to deal with windows updates maybe and so on. It's not impossible, it's just more work...
It's definitely a first world problem! :)
I'm using Windows, Linux, and MacOS in parallel most of the time.
Sadly I can't get rid of MacOS because of iOS development :/
Which one do you prefer? Altough my post was originally mostly about the hardware, we've veered on operating systems as well :-)
Well, sadly MacOS implies hardware :/
I like Linux, then Windows, then MacOS.
Linux (Xubuntu) feels rather snappy and all the dev tools run on it (besides Xcode).
MacOS also gets more dev-love than Windows it seems, but I never got the shell configured as I liked it without getting some strange bugs along the way. Also, the window manager of MacOS is horrible.
I like Final Cut Pro, which is a MacOS application, it's not as expensive as Premiere and quite optimized to run on Macs.
Games run much better on Windows and most non-dev applications seem to be integrated more nicely and work more performant (Firefox).
Weird, I've never had problems with zsh on macOS
Ah ah kind of, I use divvy and "hot corners" to solve that
True, Premier in turn is more optimized on Windows than on macOS
Yeah, gaming on macOS is a non starter
First thing I tried on my Mac was setting up zsh, but somehow different tools I used still started other shells.
I use iTerm2 with configured with command shell in Preferences -> General -> Login
In addition I use ohmyzsh and
SHELL=zshin the zshrc.If you set the
SHELLvariable tools should respect it...Zsh is installed with homebrew
Window management on Macs is really buggy. I've used Macs at work for abut 6 of the last 10 years and they've barely improved. Windows disappear, monitor settings disappear, mouse cursors work on one screen but are invisible on another, full screen apps vanish, that sort of thing. Happens a lot, whereas at least Windows is relatively stable (I never thought I'd say that).
Even iTerm2 has a whole slew of bugs. My favourite is when the screensaver kicks in there's about a 25% chance that iTerm will stop responding to mouse clicks and instead insert control characters onto your command line. That's fun.
The only thing I've noticed for sure is full screen apps and multi screens. Sometimes you have to display all available windows to find them. Another weird thing that happens to me is that sometimes if I decide to open the lid of the laptop (connected to the external screen) and close it again macOS thinks the only connected monitor is the laptop. But this hasn't happened since the last two minor versions of Mojave, so I guess they fixed that.
I feel that macOS for all its quirks, still moves faster than Windows with his complicated "editions". The relase of Windows 10 October 2018 1809 was a "clusterfudge" :D Not that this stuff never happens for macOS, if you think about it, it's kind of a miracle that Windows 10 works at all since the infinite combination of hardware configurations and more or less compatible software they have to deal with. Kudos to Microsoft on this. Apple only has to deal with their own hardware.
ahahha :)
That's weird, I've never noticed because I don't use screensavers.
At work we have an enforced screensaver for "security", which I get round by using the app "Caffeine"...
Applications like Paw couldn’t exist on the Windows side of the fence. Technically it’s possible, but the Windows ecosystem is cluttered up with antiquated “good enough” applications that crowd out gems like that.
In some domains like video editing the Mac platform provides relatively few concrete advantages, so it’s easy to switch. In others, like web development, there’s way too many irreplaceable tools. Windows is great for many things, but general web development is a serious weak spot due to the command-line environment and state of WSL, as you point out.
If you’re making a purchasing decision on an essential daily-use tool, buy the best tool you can afford.