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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.
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.
"We experienced much more traffic than we had prepared for, the website didn't go hard down but experienced slowness." And now it gets posted to Slashdot? Way to go!
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.
Depending on which side of the religious divide you occupy, people buy Apple because:
You've always been able to get more performance for less money, and yet they still sell. So what's the news here?
An imperfect plan executed violently is far superior to a perfect plan. -- George Patton
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.
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.
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.