[jonpaine]

Personally, I'm kind of amused by the appalled and horrified tech bloggers I see posting about the sky falling. I keep reading about "life long" Apple users threatening to switch ecosystems because of an SD card slot. Or function keys. I mean, people must step through A LOT OF CODE to have that impact this kind of decision.

My perspective is biased by my moving in the opposite direction. I'm just in the process of considering a transition TO Apple after being a lifelong windows user. My current build is a top of the line XPS 15 (2015). It's... disappointing. The touchpad already broke. I went through at least 3 warranty visits before the wifi finally worked halfway decent. Windows is becoming less and less what I want it to be. I use it purely for coding, but when I do jump online for a few minutes it manages to be slower than my ipad. Basically, I want a simple, fast, productivity OS that just works (sorry). I don't want it to show me ads and I'm beyond the point where I derive any satisfaction whatsoever from tinkering or configuring it to be perfect. I just want it to work well and work consistently.

Although consensus seems to be that their software is getting worse, from what I see it feels like Apple is the one making the devices that can accomplish what I'm looking for - and a big part of that is the hardware. Still, I'm interested to hear what people say about elementary OS.

[gotofritz]

It's not that simple. First of all you ignore the whole dongle / headphones / incompatibility with iPhone side of things.

I have been thinking of switching over for a while because I can't stand Apple, the company, I hate having to pay €100 for a new charger if something happens to the old one, or having to buy dongles. I detest iTunes and Preview, I don't like having Xcode dictate what goes in my machine, I don't want to be forced to buy an expensive Apple monitor because any other one looks blurry, and a few other things. But most of all - I'm feed up with paying double for quality I don't really need. Yes, the trackpad is great - but I don't care, I connect a mouse to the laptop. I can buy two Windows machines for the price of a Mac. The latest MBP announcement only adds fuel to the fire, but the fire has been burning for a while.

What the latest MBP announcement DOES show is that Apple doesn't give a monkey about devs anymore. We are not their target audience. We were like the artists who move in a rundown area, make it appealing to middle class people, and then are priced out and forced to move away. It's simply time to separate a work machine with a generic home machine. I may still get myself an iPad for connecting to my TV, music, generic web surfing, but I am going to start migrating to a Linux for dev work.

[allwein]

iTunes I understand, but what don't you like about Preview? I think it's actually one of the best parts of the mac. I'm also confused at what you mean by blurry monitors and Xcode dictating what goes in your machine?

[gotofritz]

Preview's "modern" file model which forces you to duplicate files to work on them and then automatically creates files on the filesystem with a name you don't want and you then have to go and clean up.... annoying. A lot of non Mac monitors (I have two HPs at the moment) are not very sharp used with a Mac. Apparently only Apple monitors work well with MBP - this could be balooney by anti-mac it people, but the fact that the monitor is not sharp is a fact. With XCode the fact that you have to download the whole XCode when you just want Make for example, and it comes with its own version of Ruby, etc, and it causes havoc if you have installed your own version of Ruby. brew is good, but luckily certain core unix tools only seem to come with XCode

[rnovak]

What?

Citations for any of these? I have 'make' installed on my mbp without XCode (along with clang, etc), and I use my mbp with 2 24" monitors all the time (in clamshell mode), and it's no less sharp than it is with a desktop.

[gotofritz]

I never said that monitors work better with desktop computers as opposed to laptops. I said that only Apple monitors are sharp when connected to laptops, as opposed to non Apple monitors. Wasn't that clear?

[rnovak]

Again, citation? What monitors are you comparing? I honestly hope you're not truly complaining that a 1080p monitor looks less sharp than a 4k or 5k display.

Also, where's your citation/article/anything that you can't get Make without installing XCode?

[ksherlock]

Apple no longer sells monitors.

[toyg]

Some things from Apple are indeed superior (trackpads), but when it comes to wifi and stuff... eh. In the last three years, every OSX release would fix a wifi bug and promptly introduce a new one, and the following release would fix the new bug and regress the old. I just stopped closing the laptop, and used ethernet as much as I could. I honestly don't know if that's been finally fixed, these days, because now I just don't carry it around much. At one point wifi wouldn't work if bluetooth was turned off, and bluetooth wouldn't work if wifi was turned off. And don't get me started with the mess that is wallpaper persistency - sometimes I open the laptop and suddenly it has a wallpaper I last used 2 months ago on a completely different monitor, thank god I'm not in NSFW stuff. The HDMI port is super-sensitive, but I put that down to HDMI being a bit of a shit standard. Without saying anything, they took away the option to use the Magic Trackpad inverted, forcing people to self-harm by using that ergonomic disaster.

So no, the Apple world is ok on certain things, but as shitty as the rest in others.

[oduis]

I got the same Dell XPS 15 as you have, and no problems. Wifi works great, nothing is broke, everything is blazing fast, standby is no problem. Maybe you were just unlucky with your specific device, or didn't update the drivers and BIOS. The only thing that's not good is their Thunderbolt 3 dock.

[basch]

remember that article a day ago complaining that they used old processors? that's another benefit. microsoft shipped skylake with an experimental sleep state (one hp refused to turn on) and it was a disaster. not being cutting edge is how apple will keep its hardware "just working."

now if apple would only add a trackpoint :(

[stephenr]

Apple trackpads are widely regarded as the best, period.

Mac laptops don't need a nipple that 1% of ex-think pad users froth at the mouth for and everyone else finds annoying.

[basch]

unlike a trackpad, it has a learning curve. however, if it were marketed as a superior product, and more people tried it, and they got over that couple hour hump of frustration, there would be a market for it. it is a superior navigation device, with practice.

[stephenr]

Marketing something as a superior product doesn't make it superior.

Apple is about providing simplified solutions to problems. A Trackpad AND a nipple that hardly anyone will use, is not a simplified solution.