Could the Best Windows 10 Laptop Be a Mac?

dkatana writes: Now that Windows 10 is finally out there many people are looking for the best laptop with the power to make the new OS shine. The sweet spot appears to be in $900-$1500 machines from Dell, Asus and HP. But Apple, the company that has been fighting Windows for ever, has other options for Windows 10: the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. According to InformationWeek there are many reasons to consider purchasing a MacBook as the next Windows machine, including design, reliability, performance, battery life, display quality and better keyboard. Also MacBooks have a higher resell value, retaining up to 50% of their price after five years.

Comments

Yes - known for years.

[pubwvj]

Yes, the Best Windows machines are Macs. This has been the case for a looong time. Not only are they less expensive for the lifetime of ownership, longer lives, more powerful, more fully featured but as a bonus you get to use the MacOSX and better integration with iOS. Total win.

Re:Yes - known for years.

[real gumby]

I have mod points but don't know how to use them in this case: Funny? Insightful? Informative? Flamebait? It's like an all-in-one post!

Re:Yes - known for years.

[war4peace]

When in doubt, +1 Funny.

Re:Yes - known for years.

[Anonymous Coward]

And, as a bonus, I can finally move up in hipster rank from "Outsider" to "Posuer."

Re:Yes - known for years.

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Apple or not, they've done a fair amount to force notebooks to be as good as they are today: very high resolution IPS panels, thinness, aluminum bodies, etc. I will ding Apple for seemingly starting the widescreen fad.

The only real competitor were the IBM ThinkPads but since those have been sold to Lenovo, Apple is about the only computer make who is capable of creating a decent notebook computer without just blatantly ripping off someone else's design.

Consider the Dark Ages of notebooks just a few short years ago. Crap from Dell and the others were sporting 1024x768 resolutions on crap LCD displays and were thick, heavy pieces of garbage. My ThinkPad T43 from 2004 had a 1400x1050 IPS panel and 5 years later, outside of CPU, the enterprise class machines actually had worse specifications!

Re:Yes - known for years.

[Anonymous Coward]

You still have a long way to go, young padawan:

Level 0 -- Outsider
Level 1 -- Poseur
Level 2 -- Johnny Come Lately
Level 3 -- Mainstream Trend Follower
Level 4 -- Whatever, dude
Level 5 -- Tolerated
Level 6 -- Hipster
Level 7 -- Douchebag
Level 8 -- Pretentious Douchebag
Level 9 -- Uber Douchebag
Level 10 -- Shia Labeouf

Re:Yes - known for years.

[Blaskowicz]

Just to be the contrarian, they're also responsible for chiclet keyboards everywhere. The Commodore PET 2001 was panned for having one!

Re:Yes - known for years.

[Austerity Empowers]

The best win7 boxes were Macs, I'm disappointed they stopped supporting Win7 via bootcamp, but I can't imagine the other players in the field will beat them for Win10. The PC industry is mostly now focusing on large buying corporate customers who want cheap, and don't care if things break, don't quite work right, or annoy users (read employees) who are being paid to put up with it.

The gauntlet is there for someone to make a quality laptop and desktop that is not Apple, and provide full system test & support. But so far it's a bunch of boutique companies that integrate parts I could do on my own and have no value add, or it's roll my own. Apple continues to show that people will pay a premium for a finished solution.

Re:Yes - known for years.

[AmiMoJo]

Macs have a high TCO. As well as the purchase price, you now increasingly need extras because e.g. there is only one USB port. Maintenance costs are high too, because Apple tries to force you to pay them for replacement of consumable items like batteries.

As for build quality and durability, Macs are not as solid as machines like business Thinkpads or Panasonic Let's Note (Toughbook). They are just not designed to be. Thinkpads in particular are way ahead, offering complete and easy instructions for maintenance, easy access to spare parts and so forth. Macs are not designed to be as durable or repairable as these machines, they are designed to look nice and go back to Apple for any work. Don't get me wrong, they are well made, but nothing exceptional.

One other thing - Apple don't offer laptops with TPM chips. TPM is useful for Bitlocker support. If you want to run Windows with encryption (maybe not NSA proof, but cop/border security/thief proof) then a TPM chip is worth having and almost all business oriented laptops have them. Might even be a requirement for some corporate users.

Re:Yes - known for years.

[TWX]

I was an outsider before it was popular...

Re: Yes - known for years.

[Gr8Apes]

And that Dell XPS 13 2015 will cost a pretty penny, as soon as you deck it out to similar specs, if you even can. That's not to say that Dell hasn't improved significantly over the past 5 years, because they have. But, I still recall my run of 5 Dell laptops in less than 3 years, because they kept crapping out. I have had 3 MBPs in the past 10 years, the first which I still own and still works fine, the second died after 5 and a half years of dev machine use, the third is my current all around box used daily. It's over a year old and you'd never know it.

Re: Yes - known for years.

[FlyHelicopters]

And that Dell XPS 13 2015 will cost a pretty penny, as soon as you deck it out to similar specs, if you even can.

Ahh, no...

The Dell is $800 feature complete with a nice Core i3. What does the MacBook have? Core M. Not even close. It is also $1,300, more than 50% more expensive.

The only thing the MacBook has is 256GB of SSD storage, to the XPS 13's 128GB. Otherwise the XPS 13 is a better machine. A 13.3" 1080p display, very light and tons of battery life.

Why anyone would buy the MacBook, other than to look "cool", is beyond me. You can buy three of the XPS 13 for less than the cost of 2 MacBooks.

Re:Yes - known for years.

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Like Apple or not, they've done a fair amount to force notebooks to be as good as they are today: very high resolution IPS panels, thinness, aluminum bodies, etc. I will ding Apple for seemingly starting the widescreen fad.

I ding Apple for designs that discourage serviceability: Non-removable batteries, very difficult to access HDD / RAM, etc.

Re: Yes - known for years.

[unami]

aah no, $ 1300 gets you a macbook pro with an i5 - comparable to the xps 13 9343 from dell with the same cpu, ram & ssd capacity, sold for the same price. the dell is a little smaller, but got a lot of brittle carbon fibre, the mbp has more ports (hdmi & 2x thunderbolt/mini display port), a more than 50% larger battery, slightly lower screen resolution, but a faster gpu to go with it. so it's at least a tie with the mbp being the faster, but slightly bigger & heavier machine. i'd go for the macbook, because it also got mag-safe, osx and a better touchpad. but if you're a windows user, the windows keyboard of the dell is something to consider.

Re: Yes - known for years.

[FlyHelicopters]

i5, i3, to a notebook, they are mostly the same thing...

both dual core, both hyperthreaded... the only thing the i5 really has is turbo boost, but you likely won't notice any difference.

The Dell is $800, the Macbook is $1,300, it begins and ends there. Both machines are very close overall, with each having slightly higher something or other.

Re:Yes - known for years.

[maccodemonkey]

Uhhhh what? You're spec'ing a sub notebook against a 15" notebook. Of course the sub notebook is not going to be configurable into the same range, and is going to get very expensive.

If you're comparing against a 15" Lenovo, you want to compare against the 15" Macbook Pro, which is the equivalent.

Re:Yes - known for years.

[Carewolf]

With the exception of outdated drivers and little to no support from Apple fixing them and forcing WIndows 8 on newer macs.

If the drivers are so outdated and horrible, then why does review after review claim that Windows performance (pick your version) is stellar on Macs?

Because you read Apple fanboy sites? Anyway it is not hard to have stellar performance when you have SSDs. Most laptop over average price are "stellar" and outside benchmarks hard to tell apart in performance.

Re:Yes - known for years.

[Mousit]

...very high resolution IPS panels...

Consider the Dark Ages of notebooks just a few short years ago. Crap from Dell and the others were sporting 1024x768 resolutions on crap LCD displays and were thick, heavy pieces of garbage. My ThinkPad T43 from 2004 had a 1400x1050 IPS panel and 5 years later, outside of CPU, the enterprise class machines actually had worse specifications!

I was with you right up to that part. Apple lagged woefully behind in screens for a very long time, unless you're forgetting that the 15" MBP was 1440x900 right up to mid-2012, long after other laptops had gone to at LEAST 1680x1050 (or 1600x1200 for 4:3) for the same size screen, with some even using 1920x1200. The 17" model was better, at 1680x1050 to start out with and then quickly moved to 1920x1200 in late 2008. However 1920x1200 had been fairly common on other 17" laptops already by that time. At least when talking at the MBP's same price point, of course.

And this is all just considering the MacBook Pro, which only came out in 2006; the PowerBooks before that had even lower specs. Your 2004 T43 had a 15" screen option for UXGA at 1600x1200 that outclassed the 15" MBP right up to mid-2012. :P

And keep in mind that the Retina screens have an actual resolution and an effective resolution. My 15" Retina MBP might have a 2880x1800 native IPS panel, but my actual usable desktop in OS X still defaults to that goddamn paltry 1440x900, pixel-doubled so it looks all pretty. Yes I know I can change the default, but it still annoys me that that's what it defaults to at all.

Re:Yes - known for years.

[FranTaylor]

As for build quality and durability, Macs are not as solid as machines like business Thinkpads or Panasonic Let's Note (Toughbook). They are just not designed to be.

??? huh ??? WTF ??? wow !?!?!

Aluminum body MacBooks are just crazy durable. My wife and I are both terrible klutzes, we break phones and remotes all the time. We both have 2008 MacBooks and they both look close to new. They have both been dropped on the floor many times. They run like they did when we bought them seven years ago. We also have friends and relatives with macbooks, they all say the same thing, totally rock solid.

Re:Yes - known for years.

[ElderKorean]

Yes. The best hardware.

Only one fucking mouse button.

But the best hardware.

Not used one lately hey?, the whole magic mouse surface is the button - and it is multi-touch enabled.

One finger click for regular left click. Two finger click for regular right click.

Re: Yes - known for years.

[Gr8Apes]

All touchpads on macs do right click via a 2-finger tap.

Could someone ELI5 how Macbooks retain value?

[t0qer]

There was a time I understood this during the PPC era of mac, but now that macs run on commodity, non specialized CISC based x86, I have no idea why they retain their value. A lot of PC makers are starting to make machines that look *almost* as nice as a MBP. My HP Envy Beats laptops have a nice aluminum case.

Re:Could someone ELI5 how Macbooks retain value?

[American AC in Paris]

There was a time I understood this during the PPC era of mac, but now that macs run on commodity, non specialized CISC based x86, I have no idea why they retain their value. A lot of PC makers are starting to make machines that look *almost* as nice as a MBP. My HP Envy Beats laptops have a nice aluminum case.

One reason is that they've poured a lot of effort into materials design, visual design, and industrial design, and have been doing so for years. We laugh at the Toilet Seat, the Cube, and various other goofy flops they've had in their history, but it demonstrates a) just how far back their design efforts go, and b) just how much they've learned since. A lot of other companies are getting into this now, but Apple has a pretty big head start, and they're not showing any signs of abandoning this practice any time soon.

Re:Could someone ELI5 how Macbooks retain value?

[vux984]

Three major reasons:

1) Apple don't make an inexpensive model. They start at around $1000 and go up. People who can't afford a mac but want mac will buy a used mac.

You can buy a new PC for $300.

2) Apple only has few SKUs. This makes it pretty easy to know what you are buying. It's overwhemling buying a new PC ... but a used one ... much harder to find out whether that Sony SGH-5512-T(C)-A2 is any good or not, or what it even has. Buying a macbook on craigslist... "early 2012 macbook pro, 2.4GHz 4GB RAM" ... there's pretty much all you need to know.

3)
And the low SKU count means there is a fairly healthy cottage industry and DIY info for repairs.

Buy a 5 year old HP or Toshiba or Lenovo or Dell, there's not an ifixit guide with links to instructions and parts for it.

This amounts to informal long term support not available from other vendors and props up the value.

4) Viruses and malware and the relative complexity of reinstalling Windows software if it doesn't come with a restore CD or the recovery partition is blown. This is less of a problem on Mac's, and if you can get a current OSX image you can install it. No licensing greif or keys or drivers.

5) Free OS upgrades. Nobody wants a Vista laptop.

I agree with you that there is some really good PC hardware out there now. Dell XPS ultrabooks are nice. Asus has some nice stuff too. the HP Envy series you mentioned is nice kit too.

Re:Could someone ELI5 how Macbooks retain value?

[ceoyoyo]

Making them out of metal helps. A five year old mac looks pretty good, unless there are actual dents in it. The plastic cased notebooks tend to have the colour start wearing off and/or fading, more delicate plastic bits like vent louvres break, etc.

Also, having faded, half peeled off stickers for all the hardware manufacturers all over it doesn't help.

Re:Could someone ELI5 how Macbooks retain value?

[Farmer Tim]

Incorrect: Apples also have a model number, it's printed in small type on the back/underside along with the power requirements and FCC compliance statement, and looks like A####. For example, I'm typing this on a model A1416, punch that into google and you'll see exactly what I'm using without even having to leave the search result page.

Re:Could someone ELI5 how Macbooks retain value?

[Wraithlyn]

OK seriously is that a joke? I have a T61 Lenovo Thinkpad sitting right here. I haven't a clue how to figure out what year it's from. Googling "T61 thinkpad" sure doesn't help.

With a Mac you just go to "About this Mac" in the always-visible Apple menu, and there you are... "MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013)". They could not make it any easier to tell, unless they etch the year number into the damn aluminum chassis (and who would want that?).

Apple "makes it difficult" my ass.

Mac has a firewall...

[QuietLagoon]

.... so that might be beneficial if this is correct: A Traffic Analysis of Windows 10

Some Czech guy did a traffic analysis of data produced by Windows 10, and released his findings the other day. His primary thesis was that Windows 10 acts more like a terminal than an operating system -- because of the extent of the "cloud" integration, a large portion of the OS functions are almost dependent on remote (Microsoft's) servers. The amount of collected information, even with strict privacy settings, is quite alarming. ... All text typed on the keyboard is stored in temporary files, and sent (once per 30 mins) to:...

Instead of advertising for Apple and Microsoft,

[LichtSpektren]

why not advertise for System76 and other companies that sell good hardware with Linux pre-installed?

What about touch interfaces?

[mamono]

There are no MacBooks with touch screens (and unlikely to be one any time soon). All newer Windows versions are so heavily touch-oriented I don't see how the TFA could be true. Even with a keyboard and mouse attached, the touch interface has it's advantages. I often find myself occasionally trying to use my finger to navigate a non-touch laptop and then remember "oh yeah, no touch interface".

Re:What about touch interfaces?

[cbhacking]

As you say, touch is very helpful even when not using a "touch-oriented" interface. When my girlfriend and I are watching Netflix on her machine, it's a lot easier to poke the screen where the play/pause button appears than to move the mouse pointer to that button, click it, and then move it off again so the playback controls vanish. When using a trackpad, it can actually be easier to do things like swipe up on a taskbar icon (check it out: this does the same thing as right-clicking on the icon, displaying the jump list; this feature was added in Win7) than to move the pointer down there and right-click it. When reading over somebody's shoulder, scrolling (in, say, a web page or PDF) with a fingertip is a lot easier than grabbing the mouse or keyboard, especially if you're standing.

There are a lot of places where touch is a win, even on devices that you aren't using like a tablet. Of course, that gets even more true with the increasing number of "2-in-1" Windows laptops that can detach or fold away their keyboards, becoming quite respectable tablets; my Yoga 2 Pro, for example, can easily be used on an airplane tray-table with the keyboard folded back 315 degrees and acting as a stand for the screen. Never mind that a Mac's hinge won't go even close to 180 degrees, it would be useless if it could unless you had some peripheral like a mouse (that doesn't fit on the small surface)

Car Analogy #1

[PopeRatzo]

"Could The Best Chevrolet Be A Bentley?"

Slashdot, where art thou?

Re:Car Analogy #1

[PopeRatzo]

I'd love to see the look on some pompous limeys face when he popped the hood on a Bentley and found a thumping rat.

Where I live, the only Bentleys I see are driven by Chicago Bulls players (I live a few blocks from a Bulls practice facility. When I first moved here, I noticed a lot of very tall, very well-dressed black men driving Aston Martins, Bentleys, and a shorter guy (probably a point guard) driving an Audi A8. Once I even saw a Koenigsegg and the guy was coming out of the gym and I was walking the dog. I told him "I drive that car in Need For Speed Rivals" and he laughed and said, "Good choice". I didn't have the heart to tell him that, at least in the game, the the LaFerrari was a better choice.

[true story]

Better keyboard?! What.

[Sowelu]

I cringe every time I have to use a Mac keyboard. They're awful. In what universe are they better? They're usually not even full keyboards. The one I'm stuck with at work doesn't even have pgup/pgdn, not even with the fn key. There's holes where you could put them near the arrow keys, too, like a sane laptop, but nooo.

Okay, I like the extra bucky bit, but that's an OS thing and it isn't worth the price of "nothing on a macintosh has accelerator keys".

Re:meh, keep OS X on your macbook

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope your job doesn't require any reading comprehension skills.

No Trackpoint = Bad Windows Laptop

[MSTCrow5429]

Nothing makes up for lack of a Trackpoint. Also, the article gives no evidence that Macs retain up to 50% of their value after 5 years, which is a sketchy claim, considering how fast things are improved.

Re:No Trackpoint = Bad Windows Laptop

[HornWumpus]

'Up to' is a weasel phrase. Like 'some scientists believe', anything qualified by this is sure to be pure BS.

Re:No Trackpoint = Bad Windows Laptop

[H0p313ss]

I used to think so too, but then I tried apple's touchpad. The fact that it's quite large, and handles a variety of gestures make it quite useful. (Not as nice as having an actual mouse, but we're talking laptops, after all.)

Agreed, I have both a thinkpad and a macbook on my desk right now. The macbook touchpad is much easier to use (assuming you have the drivers... note that bootcamp 6 just landed with drivers for Win 10)

Re:And how much do they pay for slashvertisements?

[NatasRevol]

Well, Informationweek gets the clicks...

Effectively removes only reason to own an apple.

[xenotransplant]

People don't buy apples to run windows on them. They buy apples because they cost 1.5x more, hating windows is hip, and the millennial hipsters thrive on conspicuous consumption.

Re:And how much do they pay for slashvertisements?

[Adriax]

Apple.
Microsoft employs weasels in their marketing department, not car dealers.

"Now see here son. Not only is this here Macbook the purdiest thang this side of the Mississippi, but it's also a real investment in your future. You buy this and I guarantee you'll get atleast half your money back when you trade up in 5 years. Guaranteed.
Can't say that about any of those other clunkers out there. They lose 95% of their value as soon as you get one. Might as well be pissing your money down the drain. Pardon my french."

tl;dr

[KlomDark]

No

Re:Windows 10 is for cows.

[bughunter]

I think in this thread, MOOF! is more appropriate.

Re:And how much do they pay for slashvertisements?

[danbob999]

Apple obviously.
If the article was "Could Windows be the best OS for an Apple laptop" then it could be paid by Microsoft.

Re:It could be if.....

[cbhacking]

Historically, the reason that Macs had poor battery life under Windows was because Apple did not provide worthwhile drivers for their (proprietary) hardware, leading to things like fans that ran at full speed constantly, rather than running on demand. It was 100% Apple's fault; Windows has plenty of features for reducing power usage, but the Bootcamp-provided drivers - the only ones that work at all, in most cases, on Apple hardware - didn't support low-power states.

Now, this was on 2007-2009 hardware, which is a long time ago. Maybe Apple has decided that it's worth making their machines run a little better under their competitor's OS now. After all, it's obvious that it's their fault and users are totally savvy enough to blame Apple, instead of blaming Microsoft, when a MacBook has bad battery life in Windows... right?

Wrong

[Luthair]

They do not last any longer than any business class hardware, they are no faster than any other laptop (I guess other than a pcie SSD which really doesn't translate into noteable improvements)

As someone who has spent the last 5-years using macbooks with windows installed for work there are massive downsides. The keyboards are awful (bad layout and bad feel), they run very hot, and the battery life is poor. Both the last two points are Apples fault for disabling various power CPU states and using a proprietary GPU switching solution which they do not provide a driver for leaving Windows with access only to the integrated GPU.

If you're a Windows user you should not by Apple unless you absolutely need to have access to OSX, and even then you should consider a Windows laptop and a mac mini which combined will probably cost less.

Re:Better keyboard?! What.

[Kergan]

Fn + Up/Down for Page Up/Down works fine on my end. Not sure what you did with your device.

Re:And how much do they pay for slashvertisements?

[plasm4]

My apple notebook is nearly 5 years old and the same model has sold recently on eBay for roughly 50% of what I paid. It's not bullshit.

Re:Parent is On Topic actually

[kuzb]

As opposed to what? The Apple shills and fanboys?

Re: And how much do they pay for slashvertisements

[Redbehrend]

Sold my ASUS laptop that was 4 years old for 60% of what I paid. Hate to break it to apple people but you buy a good enough machine it or the parts will be worth something later, not just apple.

Re: And how much do they pay for slashvertisements

[plasm4]

I never said otherwise

Re:Effectively removes only reason to own an apple

[Bing Tsher E]

I bought a three year old Dell Latitude with an i7 processor in it for $250 about a month ago. The idiots crowing that a 5 year old Macbook 'holds half it's value' are clearly looking at it as the seller, not the buyer.

The Latitude I bought is even one of the more popular Hackintosh models.

One USB port?

[John Bokma]

• MacBook Air: Two USB 3 ports (up to 5 Gbps), Thunderbolt 2 port (up to 20 Gbps)
• MacBook Pro: Two Thunderbolt 2 ports (up to 20 Gbps), Two USB 3 ports (up to 5 Gbps)