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.

Comments

Apps, Apps and more Apps

[ColdWetDog]

Linux is fine and all but it is *still* missing a number of high end professional level programs in a number of fields. Until that changes (and it hasn't in how many years now?), Linux on the Laptop will be a fairly niche product. If it meets your requirements that's great. You get lots of options including MacBooks in their limited incantations.

But no Adobe, Autodesk, Maya etc.

Life's a bitch. Then you vote.

Re:Apps, Apps and more Apps

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is fine and all but it is *still* missing a number of high end professional level programs in a number of fields. Until that changes (and it hasn't in how many years now?), Linux on the Laptop will be a fairly niche product.

It hardly matters because macOS is now starting to miss a lot of high end professional level programs as well. You're right that the new MacBooks aren't entirely likely to push people to Linux. But they are absolutely pushing people to Windows.

Those Macs were pushed at people who use Macs for "creative" software. But since Apple killed Aperture and hobbled Final Cut Pro, most of the professional users were forced off Apple products and on to Adobe's Creative Cloud. Adobe's Creative Cloud runs just fine under Windows.

The only other large group of people I know using MacBooks are developers who wanted a desktop Unix that IT would be willing to support. With the loss of the function keys and the abysmal max memory spec, the new MacBook Pros are worthless for that crowd. They might be pushed towards Linux, but with Microsoft starting to push Linux dev tools into Windows, the "IT supported" requirement probably means they'll hook back to Windows instead.

Which leaves the new MacBook Pros as laptops for people who like shiny things but don't particularly care about functionality. It's funny to see Apple release new hardware that's already in the "Don't Buy" category, but the recommendation on these things is already to wait for the next revision in the hopes that the specs won't be terrible.

Re:Apps, Apps and more Apps

[Moof123]

A common problem is that being 99.9% compatible is not enough. As soon as a customer gets a drawing or document with messed up formatting the jig is up. If it is a MS Word 201X vs MS Word 201Y issue, management doesn't care. As soon as you mention open source, for "equivalent" or anything of the sort, you get shut down. For business it often is not worth the perceived headache to not be 100% the same as your customers or colleagues, even if the license fees look horrendous to a mere peon.

We recently swapped all our machines from CentOS to Redhat because the vendor would not believe our bug submissions unless we used the officially supported OS. None of our bugs were OS related (we had been keeping one Redhat machine around for bug double checking, but it was becoming a hassle). According to our moles the vendor actually does all of their development on CentOS and then verifies against Redhat, but they will never admit it openly.

That's excellent!

[ScentCone]

I'll just pop on over to System76, grab a machine, and install the Adobe suite that's necessary for doing business.

Re: That's excellent!

[pr0t0]

...Inkscape is very good for vector graphics, much better than illustrator.

Better, unless you are planning to take your work to a printing company. Inkscape does not appear support knockouts or overprints which means you would have to rely on auto-trapping software if the printer even has that. Inkscape was clearly not built for color separations. Better if don't need a gradient mesh.

Because it's been years, I looked at the Inkscape web site. They still promote bezier curves as a bullet point. That's like an auto manufacturer touting a steering wheel. Simpler than Adobe Illustrator? Almost certainly. Better than Illustrator? Yeah...no.

Re: That's excellent!

[tsqr]

The UI in pretty much every Adobe product isn't any better. The learning curve for new users is atrociously steep.

Interesting example of how words and phrases, through usage, can come to mean the opposite of their original meanings. From Wikipedia: "A learning curve is a graphical representation of the increase of learning (vertical axis) with experience (horizontal axis)." and "The familiar expression "a steep learning curve" is intended to mean that the activity is difficult to learn, although a learning curve with a steep start actually represents rapid progress."

Re: Are linux adverts still bad adverts?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the jobs bubble exploding. I can see lots of religious Apple fans saying bad things about Apple.for the first time. Heck even arstechnica posts who say the new Mac is crap don't get the autodownvote they used to enjoy every time you didn't praise Apple. Sold all my Apple stock a few days ago.

Re:I gave up before the launch

[dbialac]

I figured out with Yosemite that Apple was moving in a direction I didn't want to follow anymore. I'm using a Surface Book these days and IMO it's the best computer I've ever used or owned.

Re:Are linux adverts still bad adverts?

[cayenne8]

This would be nice (and I"m a Linux fan, my day job involves Linux servers)....but this linux laptop offering while being nice spec wise....will it run the programs I need it for....Photoshop, Davinci Resolve. I like FCPX, but could do Premier Pro....

Trouble is, none of these run on Linux. DaVinci Resolve does have a linux version, but not the FREE version....

I do my artsy stuff on the mac...I'm still refusing to rent my software, so for all the Adobe stuff, I have OS X versions of CS6 suite....so, I was hoping for a nice mac to upgrade to.

I was actually hoping against hope that they'd have an upgraded 5K iMac ready for market that had a boosted GPU and more graphics RAM available....or even an upgraded Mac Pro.

I'm still able to work with what I have, and can hang on a bit longer...but at some point.....well.

Should be marked "Sponsored Post"

[Drunkulus]

This is nothing more than an infomercial for system 76 hardware. There's not a single mention of a Mac user considering trying Linux instead of OS X.

Doesn't make much sense

[JoeyRox]

I would venture to guess that the majority of Mac owners do not fall under the category of power users, where they would be inclined to experiment with a much less user/noob friendly platform as Linux is vs OS X. If anything they would consider Windows 10, which based on the posts at MacRumors seems to be what's happening, esp after Microsoft's recent Surface product announcements.

Since when has Apple been about bang/buck?

[el borak]

Depending on which side of the religious divide you occupy, people buy Apple because:

1. It offers an unparalleled user experience.
2. They're sheeple/fanboys and have to have it.

You've always been able to get more performance for less money, and yet they still sell. So what's the news here?

Re:Are linux adverts still bad adverts?

[TWX]

I will say this much. It's a very well written "press release" which essentially is and ad, but on the other hand I only knew of one Linux-ready laptop that was vendor-supported out of th box, and that is the very expensive option from Dell.

I've been holding-off on a laptop because last time I bought a new laptop to put Linux on, it had a problem with how the real time clock was handled and it was essentially not usable as a Linux box. I've put it on used laptops since then (like the Alienware M17R2 that I'm typing this on) but I hadn't seen any good sources for immediately-supported hardware. This fixes that and gives me some thought as to what I am going to do in the future, especially since the Late-2011 Macbook Pro that I'm using has the video-chipset problem that I need to take in for recall-fix, and it's getting long in the tooth anyway.

Re: Are linux adverts still bad adverts?

[jimbo]

I agree with your first sentence but respectfully disagree with the rest; these things are exactly what makes a laptop a premium one and I think it's fair enough. If I had lots of disposable income I'd buy one in a heartbeat. I like macOS too but to be fair I can use any OS, I'm not religious, I dropped religion after the great OS/2 flame wars.

I still have my 2006 Macbook Pro and apart from the battery it's almost like new, after all these years even moving parts like the fans are in perfectly good condition..

I replaced it with a cheap Clevo because I play games and I'm on a tighter budget now. I'd run Kubuntu on the Clevo but GuildWars 2 ran like crap on Linux last I tried, so Windows it is.

Re: Are linux adverts still bad adverts?

[Joce640k]

I agree with your first sentence but respectfully disagree with the rest; these things are exactly what makes a laptop a premium one and I think it's fair enough. If I had lots of disposable income I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

You haven't ever looked at (eg.) Thinkpads then? Much better built and specced than anything Apple makes.

Not every non-Apple laptop is a $300 throwaway piece of plastic junk...

Re:Are linux adverts still bad adverts?

[mspohr]

We have two MacBooks in our family and both are old, slow, out of date. I was waiting for the "refresh"... however, it's just underwhelming.
I bought a Chromebook a few months ago because my 2010 Macbook was getting to the point where it was unusable. Very happy with the Chromebook at a fraction of the price of the Macbook. It's much more responsive than the Macbook. I've also set up Crouton so I have native Ubuntu with just a tab key screen shift when I need it. This Chromebook also has a touch screen which I like. I'll replace the other Macbook with a Chromebook also.
Sorry Apple.