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MacBook Pro (2016) Disappointment Pushes Some Apple Loyalists To Ubuntu Linux (betanews.com)
Linux distributions have emerged as one of the beneficiaries in the aftermath of the MacBook Pros launch. Many people aren't pleased with the offering and prices of Apple's three new laptops and some of them are resorting to Linux-powered laptops. From a report on BetaNews: Immediately after the Apple Keynote, famed Ubuntu laptop and desktop seller, System76, saw a huge jump in traffic from people looking to buy its machines. The traffic was so intense, that it needed to upgrade servers to keep up, it said. "We experienced much more traffic than we had prepared for, the website didn't go hard down but experienced slowness. We had to scale up to return to normal. It was a pretty big surge, I don't have the details in front of me at the moment but I've not really heard of anything like this before. People being so underwhelmed by a product that immediately following a new product release they actively seek out competitor's products," says Ryan Sipes, Community Manager, System76. I decided to compare specifications and pricing on my own, so I headed to both Apple.com and System76.com to compare. Apple's new 15-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2,400. This machine has a Quad-core Sklyake i7, maxes out at 16GB of RAM, has an NVMe 256GB SSD, and a Radeon Pro 450 with a paltry 2GB memory. Alternatively, I headed to System76 and configured its 15-inch Oryx Pro. I closely matched the MacBook Pro specs, with a Quad-core Sklyake i7 and NVMe 256GB SSD. Instead of 16GB of RAM as found on the Apple, I configured with 32GB (you can go up to 64GB if needed). By default, it comes with a 6GB Nvidia GTX 1060. The price? Less than $2,000! In other words, the System76 machine with much better specs is less expensive than Apple's.
Pushes Some Apple Loyalists To Ubuntu Linux
I would think that some will actually be very few. I'm a Linux fan, but I think it will only attract the very few technically aware MacBook users. Though getting better, Linux is does not match the "everything works" Apple philosophy, i.e. you buy a graphics tablet or whatever, plug it in and all your apps will work with it straight off.
So I've been a Linux user since 1994, and it's been my primary development environment, and provided me a job, for 20+ years now, and for that I'm very thankful. I love developing on Linux.
That being said, I owned a succession of Linux laptops that never worked entirely correctly before I got my retina macbook pro in 2012. I'd say 25% of system updates to my Linux distro would break something, maybe a wireless driver would get flaky, maybe X11 would crap out in some new or unusual way, maybe the battery life would be bad because some kind of battery optimization would stop working. There were ALWAYS problems, it was like living with a finicky collector's automobile that you're spending as much time tinkering with to keep it running as you are actually driving it. A major source of problems with Linux was always sleep and hibernate modes, which were clunky to engage, slow to suspend and resume, and, if they worked, almost always had caveats (I don't know how many scripts I wrote that would switch to a virtual console away from X before suspend and then back again after resume, because X would so often just die if you suspended while it controlled the display).
Maybe things have improved, but I doubt it. On the other hand, this 2012 macbook pro has been a complete pleasure to use. EVERYTHING works correctly, I have never had a single problem of any kind with it. Tons of little details all work seamlessly together. I can close the lid and the thing sleeps, open it, and it wakes up. Never had a graphics problem or a driver problem of any kind.
Of course I know this is because the deck is stacked in favor of Apple, who own the entire stack from hardware through operating system and up through most software. But I don't care. Because it just works, and works so well.
That being said, I am very disappointed with the newest iteration of the macbook pro and I don't think I'll be buying one despite having assumed that I would, leading up to the actual announcement. I will just chug along with this 2012 rMBP. I will NOT switch back to Linux. I'll take a correctly functioning slower and older laptop over a fast and new machine filled with quirks and bugs.
these comparisons miss the fact that the Retina display is sooo much better for the vast majority of things that most Linux users do with computers. Text-mode consoles and development are infinitely easier with high-dpi text; I've literally more than doubled the amount of time I can use a computer in a day without developing a headache by using higher-quality displays
I have zero problems with my 1080 display. The text looks fine and is not blurry. I do not get headaches and I'm on the computer pretty much all day. If I wanted to see an individual pixel, I'd have to get out a magnifying glass. And this is on a 23" desktop monitor, so the DPI has to be much lower compared to a 15" laptop at 1080.
I suspect most people are drooling over resolution numbers and not actual performance. That's not to say that you aren't helped by it, but my guess is you're in the minority, because I really don't hear about getting headaches as a common complaint from computer users.
Does GIMP's UI remain poor even after turning on Windows > Single Window Mode? If so, what are your specific UI annoyances with GIMP and Blender?
GIMP and Blender are probably fine for some web graphics work, and maybe even some in-house print work. But they really do lack a lot of the nuanced or finer-grain tools necessary for commercial projects. They can also be problematic where files need to be worked on by different people in different companies at different points in the project. Since the fall of QuarkXPress, the industry standardized on Adobe for good or ill. You realistically cannot just decide to change tool sets without changing the industry.
You can call Adobe crap if you want, and maybe you're right, but I've never had a project fail to go to press because of an issue with Creative Suite. I have seen projects fail to go to press because some freelancer decided to use something other than Adobe software and a graphic didn't show up on the DI because an EPS had some weird quirk in its code. If you're building a product that's used in the creative industry like a digital press, or platemaker, or anything else; you are building and testing with Adobe.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
I can't believe this is on the front page. This is the oldest Apple flamewar ever.
I agree, the new MBP is . . . terrible. But the idea that this Oryx "closely matches" the MBP is ridiculous beyond the CPU. They're wildly different. Apologies, but . . . apples and oranges.
The Oryx:
- is made of plastic
- weighs about 40% more
- has a much lower resolution screen
- lacks that touch bar and expensive ARM hardware (which granted, pretty much no one, including me, wants)
- lacks any thunderbolt, let alone two separate thunderbolt 3 controllers (the big "pro" feature in the new MBP)
- has a smaller battery and way more power hungry components
- an SSD that I'm pretty sure is nowhere near as fast
- doesn't run OS X
These are the things that jack up the price of the MBP. Whether or not they're a sensible cost proposition is very different from "see, practically the same." Apple screwed up and inflated the price with things people don't want.
It's cool that System76 is getting a lot more attention. I think I'm about to buy a Puri.sm laptop, the disappointing new MBP put me over. But come on, they are not the same. One might make a lot more sense to a lot of people, but the "see I built the same thing for way less money" victory dance is just tired, and embarrassing for the front page of a site that's supposed to have editors.
GIMP and Blender already *are* used in professional work. Just because you don't like the UIs and don't know how to use the software properly doesn't make it unprofessional. It's a just different workflow than what you're used to.
Not sure why you put Maya in there as they have had Linux compatibility since at least 2007.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Yup. Linux has mostly caught up. I am considering moving to Linux Mint. Tim Cook and Jony Ive have ruined Apple.
Note that's a low-end "2+2" Kaby Lake U CPU. Apple never uses those. Apple uses "2+3e" CPUs in their 13" MBP; those CPUs have a faster GPU component and eDRAM, which is part of what gives MacBooks such great GPU performance (relatively speaking).
The Kaby Lake 2+3e won't be available until Q1. Nor is the Kaby Lake 4+2 configuration used in the 15" MBP.
The only way Apple could have offered Kaby Lake in the 13" MBP would be to use a slower chip than what they picked, which would be self-defeating.
You haven't ever looked at (eg.) Thinkpads then? Much better built and specced than anything Apple makes.
Except for the trackpad on ThinkPads, which is utter complete garbage.