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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.
The summary sounds like an obvious plug for system76. I'm not saying it's bad, because what the summary says, is in fact true. I've compared them myself. I even have a System76 desktop and am pleased with it. However, and advertisement disguised as an article is still and advertisement.
GIMP and Blender are free, no need to waste money on Adobe crap.
This. I had the exact same experience with Linux, and made the exact same switch when the Retina MacBook Pros were first released. I still use Linux whenever possible on servers, but I don't have time to screw around with my desktop and laptop machines. I need them to just work, which Apple mostly accomplishes (aside from a few relatively minor and very occasional issues).
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Question: how old are you? :). I suspect there are more people with my issues than you give me credit for, although my point continues to be: the $2k for a system76 computer is not apples-to-apples to the $2400 MBP, and that the high-dpi screen, along with the software care that has gone into making it usable and functional across a wide variety of applications and actual "apparent" resolutions is quite valuable.
Other than size, weight, battery life, wake from sleep that actually works, wifi performance, ssd performance, cross-device integration, speaker quality, macOS... but other than that, what HAVE apple bothered to do for their users?
I've been using Apple laptop hardware since the 12" PowerBook G4. My most recent purchase was in 2014. This is the first laptop release I am refusing to buy, after having said earlier this year (pre-announcement) that I would be upgrading.
For me, the reasons have little to do with the performance-related specifications, and everything to do with what I perceive to be tremendous arrogance on the part of Apple and the particular design choices that were made that, in my view, clearly reveal their willingness to sacrifice--indeed, completely disregard--function in favor of design.
The first problem is the removal of MagSafe. Ever since it was introduced, they've done multiple iterations of the MagSafe connector, to the point that it was even parodied by CollegeHumor, only to remove it entirely.
The second is the removal of all ports except USB-C / Thunderbolt 3, and then charging $19 - $45 for each optional adapter, rather than including even the most basic USB to USB-C in the box. For a machine that is targeted toward professionals and can cost $3000, this is unacceptable. You need to buy the extra adapter just to have functionality that you currently have with hardware that Apple itself provided (e.g., iPhone/iPad). Then, to say that you made this design choice to improve the portability and weight of the device, is just sophistry: by making people buy and keep track of a whole slew of adapters just to recover the functionality they had before is a step backwards in portability and ease of use. To me, this indicates that Jony Ive only cares about what the machine looks like and doesn't give a fuck about how people in the real world might actually use it.
The third problem is the lack of an included 3-prong extension cable. Yes, for a lot of people, this was optional. But making it optional out of the box means that it's one more hidden cost, especially for an adapter that already costs so much on its own. Why take it out of the box now? Is $3000 too little profit margin for Apple?
The fourth problem, and the most telling of all, is the overall choice to limit the hardware specifications--for example, the maximum allowed RAM--on a device that does not have user-serviceable RAM, no less, simply because it would have impacted battery life. This is an outright lie, because all you should do is make the battery bigger and the device thicker. This tells us that Apple again chooses to put design first and usability and performance last.
Why buy this product? It reeks of hubris, and this is coming from someone who, again, has been a long-time user of Apple products.
There's a difference between "free" and "costs nothing".
My time costs nothing. I don't need to pay anyone. I can take my time and do it my way, at my own convenience and stop when I like.
However, forking out $500 extra is not something I can necessarily do at any point.
But, to be honest, you're assuming that a) they're an existing Mac user, b) they can't cope on Ubuntu and c) things are easier to learn on Mac than on Ubuntu.
Not all of those are going to be true. And when they're not, the time factor is common to both machines, or specific to your particular workload.
For instance, after 20 years in the industry, I still feel a productivity drop the second I hit a Mac workstation. I literally feel held back on what I want to achieve. When it works, sure, it's fine like anything else. But when it doesn't, it's a damn nightmare and finding service and support is not cheap if you don't like the answer "We'll just reinstall". And I'm not just talking Mac desktops but Mac "servers" as well (P.S. a bog-standard Mac with a software upgrade from the App Store isn't a "server").
Take, for instance, when I needed to renew a certificate. On one Mac Mini server we were using, I clicked Renew, it said it was successful, done. On another, identical, purchased at the same time, same spec, redundant Mac Mini performing the same functions, the Renew failed. Two hours later, after basically using a terminal and what amounted to OpenSSL commands, I got it to renew without breaking the certificate chain. UI options to do that after failure? ZERO. And guess where the Renew button is, go on... I dare you. It changes between OS versions and is tucked away in an obscure place half the time.
Sure, it's not every day, but that's the instances I use them. And in the every day stuff, I avoid them precisely because of stuff like this. We have suites of Macs... the users avoid them and can get into all kinds of trouble especially where keychains or App Store apps are involved. Simple fixes but "only if you know how".
Macs are nice WHILE THEY WORK and you use them to do simple things. The time and effort when they don't is multiplied enormously compared to competitors. I can google and in five seconds find an Ubuntu page for basically anything I want to do. With Macs, I can spend hours searching forums (central knowledgebase is bog-useless, a bit like MS KB, but at least most general PC forums can help you on a Windows PC) and end up at the answer "You can't" or "Nobody knows."
Yes, I manage them. I manage hundreds of iPads and dozens of Macs, and some servers. And they consume more time than hundreds of Chromebooks, hundreds of PCs and dozens of Windows servers. Over my lifetime I've managed hundreds of them, thousands of iPads and thousand and thousands of other machines. And I still choose not to use them whenever possible because of the time-suck that finding out how to do something simple can be.
Think of it this way: The Mac is more expensive and makes some functions easier. The Ubuntu is cheaper, and takes more legwork. Windows is the middle ground, not cheap but not simple either.
However, when things go wrong, that flips completely on its head.
P.S. I had a 2-week argument with Apple only recently because we can't create iTunes accounts for a school. Doesn't matter what they get me to sign up to, etc. they have no support for it, the systems they have in place (including Apple School Manager which is still in Beta over here), etc. does not provide me with the simplest of functionality to lock down an iPad, even with £100k of Cisco Meraki MDM kit. Their ultimate solution was to relax a security restriction so I could manually create iTunes accounts so that kids with iPads could sign in and use them. That's their solution for A SCHOOL with hundreds of these things.
When things go wrong, or outside of their intended use-case, Apple honestly could not care less. I'd rather not pay for that attitude, and avoid having to d
It didn't happen through the 90s when Apple were completely adrift, and it won't happen now. The quality of the Linux desktop has not really changed since the late 90s, no matter how much various teams try to make it look like macOS. The same problems with audio, wifi, VPNs, wake from sleep, GPUs, and loading things reliably from network shares within applications still exist.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Go use a retina display, on a mac (so it doesn't have brain damaged scaling) for a week. It will ruin you for 1080p.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Big-ish (such as Adobe) and niche consumer software vendors have had no reason to support Linux and its paltry 2% usage share, and many reasons not to, including MS platform FUD and the legal understanding of FOSS licenses.
Apple has a reputation for supporting professionals, but this new lineup all but wipes that out. The hardware is too underwhelming to maintain the hype. Apple has finally reached the point where their obsession with aesthetic design is compromising their products' capabilities. Apple has fully abandoned "form follows function" in favor of "function follows form", and in doing so have put themselves on a path to failure.
System76 may have experienced a traffic spike, but unfortunately it won't last once all the disillusioned Apple users realize how spoiled they've been by OSX.
Apple will price their products to reflect the development costs and engineering expense they invest to design and deliver new parts, services, and experience.
Agreed. The problem is that in the past those costs went into developing useful features like a rugged aluminium body, a fantastic glass trackpad with gesture support, longer battery life etc. With this model that cost has gone into removing multiple important ports (one USB-A and a SD card slot would have been really nice), removing previous innovations (no mag-safe) and removing function keys to replace them with a silly gimick that would require me to divide attention between the keyboard and screen.
On top of this they release it with a CPU that is one year old and a GPU that is one generation old. This is not the Apple of a few years ago that negotiated to get early access to Intel CPUs and used cutting end GPUs in the machines. On top of that they did not refresh their desktop line and are STILL trying to sell a $4k+ Mac Pro machine which is now 3 years old. Apple have not only dropped the ball with the mac they did so so long ago that the competition has run with it and scored and they still don't even seem to realize it. Just compare the new MS Surface Studio to what Apple came up with. I've used macs for over a decade now but this even really was the last straw and reluctantly I'm heading back to Linux and Windows now.