[Jaqua]

Looks like a proper MacBook Pro replacement HW wise, but the OS is not one I would use for work.. =/ So attached to OSX for the past 6 years and cannot see me using a windows OS for work , but at home only for gaming. The new MacBook Pro has many flaws. Not sure how this compares in real use for it?

[itodd]

I recently left my macbook with the TSA after a frantic sprint through security. I was stuck with a windows 7 PC for the week.

Armed with Putty and a browser, I only missed the touchpad of my macbook. I do most of my work in Jupyter and in vim. It's rather liberating to realize you are not tied to one ecosystem. My point is I thought I would never be productive without my mac but that simply wasn't true.

I suppose I am an edge case though as most of my work is performed on my headless linux workstation.

For those wondering, TSA held on to my macbook which I retrieved over the weekend.

[leesalminen]

I’m honestly pretty amazed they didn’t relieve you of your laptop. Lots of stories of thieves in blue shirts.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/top-20-airports-tsa-theft/stor...

[seanmcdirmid]

Good on the TSA!

[multibit]

yes, good on the TSA for not stealing the laptop they confiscated/found.

[QML]

Juypter? Can I ask what do you do for a living? Data-science related?

[splintercell]

> I recently left my macbook with the TSA after a frantic sprint through security. I was stuck with a windows 7 PC for the week.

Care to elaborate more on what really happened?

[kharms]

Sounds like he forgot it after taking it out to be x-rayed,

[itodd]

Correct.

[splintercell]

Oh I thought that TSA didn't let him continue with his Macbook.

[pier25]

I tried to switch to Windows for work (for gaming it's the obvious choice) but I just couldn't.

Windows 10 is IMO the best Windows ever, but I was surprised that the ecosystem was really poor compared to macOS. Most of the software you find online are outdated win32 apps with scaling problems. Even modern software from major companies still has scaling problems such as Adobe CC or even the mighty Photoshop.

I also didn't find worthy replacements for my most used apps such as Alfred. Even something like iStatMenus doesn't have a replacement in Windows, all the alternatives are really poor in comparison.

[ksk]

Just to give a counter point - every single device we use at work (biotech R&D) requires windows. All of our equipment (plate readers, flocytometry, purification systems, PCR, fermentors, congutators,etc etc) runs on windows-only software. And these are all several hundred million dollar verticals. Personally, I haven't run into a single piece of equipment that works with MacOS. Except maybe one of our bioreactors, which used a web interface, but that too required a windows tool for other things. Windows is used in a TON of proper manufacturing setups, traditionally only for SCADA/HMI, but more so now on the control side, with PC based automation becoming more prominent.

Which ecosystem is "poor" depends on your own current situation.

[xenihn]

As far as I know, you can somewhat easily run Windows on Mac hardware. The opposite isn't true.

[kn0where]

Microsoft does an excellent job making Windows run on just about any x86[_64] device (excluding ancient hardware). Windows runs perfectly on a Mac, whether in a VM or via dual boot.

[MikusR]

Even on Macs that can't run current Mac OS version

[rikkus]

Does the touchpad work properly now? Last time I checked was 2010 so obviously it might have improved.

[ksk]

Yeah, but I don't know if you can get your system validated, which is a requirement for us, and most people in this field. The HN audience is more aligned towards certain domains, and I merely wanted to present an alternate context. Not that it matters, but I like using OSX :)

[nathansoz]

Which is super unfortunate considering it is an artificial limitation.

[dawnerd]

> The opposite isn't true.

Sure you can. I've gotten macos installed in a vm and even ran a hackintosh for a while which was remarkably easy these days.

[0xFFC]

No it is not. It is not officially supported nor there is strong community support. When people like myself want for work, i want something 100% , I cannot explain it to my supervisor:”naaah, my hackintosh required a little bit of maintenance, so that’s why I submitted the paper late”.

[dawnerd]

Fair enough. Although I’ve had just as many issues running Windows in boot camp.

I do realllly wish Apple would open up and let us officially install on different hardware - especially if they’re only going to update the Mac pros every few years.

[pier25]

> Which ecosystem is "poor" depends on your own current situation

Indeed, I was speaking from my personal experience.

[seanalltogether]

Oddly enough I think mac and windows switched professional users somehow. I don't know a single developer on a windows machine, however most people I know working in 3d, digital illustration or video work all use windows machines now.

[Viper007Bond]

Windows Subsystem for Linux has been huge however. I used to have to run Vagrant or something on Windows to build stuff but WSL makes life super easy as a developer on Windows. I'm still one of the handful of people at a 600 person company though that runs Windows. :/

[cube2222]

I'd like to second that. I've been using WSL + Docker on Windows for a long time now for web development (linux backend development) and it's been a breeze. Works flawlessly.

You can do fun things, like tail logs to a file using linux and simultaneously analyze the file using windows tools.

[swah]

How do you access your files inside the subsystem? Don't you get permission problems (executable files etc)? I had so many issues with Virtualbox in Windows, I rather just use a Linux desktop distro...

[cube2222]

They made a compatibility layer.

You shouldn't access files in WSL using windows, but the other way around it's absolutely ok.

So if my projects are at C:/Development/Projects/...

Then I just open /mnt/c/Development/Projects/... on WSL

I haven't had any permission problems, not even once.

Same for Docker for Windows. It uses Hyper-V + some network disk sharing magic, which makes directory mounts into docker containers work great. So sometimes, like, when I need to debug a non-cross-platform linux program. (WSL doesn't handle process forking well, so some debuggers, like Go Delve don't work) I just do something like

docker run -v C:/Development/Projects/MyProject:/mnt/MyProject -it ubuntu /bin/bash

[snuxoll]

Apple lost a lot of the creative market with the trashcan Mac Pro. If I was doing heavy video editing or other work that demanded a high-end workstation I would immediately look at HP or Dell because I don't want to buy hardware that's obsolete out of the gate with no internal expansion support, or at least no STANDARD internal expansion support (proprietary GPU and SSD connections are stupid, why do you do this Apple).

On the other hand, outside of ML it's not like many software developers need to upgrade to a new GPU every (other) year and current processor trends show very little performance uplift between generations to upgrade - once Apple finally gets 32GB of memory in the MBP most developers will be set for many years.

[pier25]

> Apple lost a lot of the creative market with the trashcan Mac Pro

Exactly.

I wrote this last year criticising the current state of Mac hardware.

https://medium.com/@Pier/the-problem-of-osx-hardware-in-2016...

[WalterSear]

If you are a developer who needs lots of machine power. there are few reasons not to work in the cloud, these days.

[nikanj]

1) Latency 2) Developing custom hardware that needs to be attached to dev box 3) No rage when the wifi at the airport sucks 4) etc

Even though you don't need lots of power, there's plenty of solid and valid reasons why others might.

[WalterSear]

Exactly: a few reasons.

Moreover

1. latency is low enough that people are playing triple AAA video games on AWS for a $1/hr.

https://lg.io/2015/07/05/revised-and-much-faster-run-your-ow...

2. Sure, that's a good reason. It had better be spewing out lots of data, though, or again, you might as well process in the cloud.

3. Being able to access your workstation via airport wifi at all is actually a benefit in this case, unless you intend to wheel it around like a suitcase.

[kyriakos]

This is indeed very odd but true. I understand why developers switched and the reason is probably that most development these days is Web development and OSX is the closest to a Unix os with a polished gui. On the other hand I can't understand why creatives switched to windows.

[sangnoir]

> On the other hand I can't understand why creatives switched to windows.

Apple's neglect.

[kn0where]

Yup. Here's how Apple lost[1] creatives:

- The laptop lineup only offers Intel graphics or AMD's weakest mobile GPUs. I suspect that Metal has something to do with why they've pretended Nvidia doesn't exist for the past ~5 years.

- The only non-abandoned[2] machine in the desktop lineup is a non-modular all-in-one.

- Apple ceded the creative-pro software market to Adobe. Final Cut, Logic, used to be industry leaders, and they had companion software products that Apple has either neglected or discontinued. Premiere + After Effects is a far more powerful & widely used toolset than Final Cut + Motion, plus Adobe's software also runs on powerful Windows PCs, eliminating Apple's lock-in.

- Pen-input is iPad exclusive. Apple has no desire to bring touch to the Mac, and while I agree that macOS is not designed for fingers, I'm sure artists would like a convertible MacBook Pro that supported the Apple Pencil.

[1] Obviously this is a generalization

[2] For all intents and purposes, the Mac Pro will still be abandoned until they release the promised new one circa 2018. The current Mac Pro and the Mac mini are terrible, ancient PCs that only sell any units because Apple has neglected giving macOS any good hardware to run on in those form factors or price points.

[demonshreder]

> Apple's neglect.

Elaborating on it, Custom hardware (esp. GPU) support. DX 11 over Metal. Apple chose not to upgrade OpenGL or implement Vulkan.

[scholia]

> however most people I know working in 3d, digital illustration or video work all use windows machines now.

You can stick really fast processors, tons of RAM and one or two Nvidia graphics cards in a very cheap tower. If only Apple sold a cheesegrater-style tower that could do that ;-)

Thee are even some Windows laptops that do the job now. Wirecutter picked the Dell XPS 15 as The Best 15-Inch Laptop for Photo and Video Editing https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-15-inch-laptops-for-p...

[21]

> I don't know a single developer on a windows machine

There's also a fair amount of peer pressure.

I was at a big software company and I choose a Lenovo with Windows instead of a Mac. I was the only one, and the other members of the team constantly tried to get me to switch, and trolled me, as if they were embarrassed with me. Now I'm at another big company, where Windows is more prevalent (legacy), but team members are still shocked that I chose again a Lenovo with Windows and Ubuntu VM on top.

If you were to interview to a startup and the founder coded on a Windows, what would most devs feel about it?

[ksk]

Well you need windows if you want to develop windows software!

[sydd]

For me it feels like you want to tweak Windows to be a clone of your OSX setup. Hint: it will never happen, same way you cant ever make OSX really like Windows. For example I could never find a good replacement for Paint.NET on OSX.

I dunno why people say that one or the other is superior for work (except if you work with some special software that exists only for one OS). Both of them are equally good, since everything is moving to the cloud, for most non-specialized tasks you need one app - a browser. If you look at other fields like programming, graphics work, 3D,.. they are the same again (except for special cases like C# or Swift development).

And things like iStatMenus is not something that is used for work, its a widget that you like. Perhaps you simply like the look and feel of OSX more?

[pier25]

> For me it feels like you want to tweak Windows to be a clone of your OSX setup

Not really. The features I want could be easily developed in Windows, or Linux, but for some reason this isn't the case.

A good example of this are launchers. Once you start using a launcher you wonder how you could have lived without it.

MacOS offers Spotlight which is very limited but there are 3 very good third party options: Alfred, Launchbar, and Quicksilver. These offer a lot more than simply opening files and applications.

There are launchers for Windows too (launchy, Wox, etc) but the functionality is very limited compared to the macOS options. I suspect this may be cultural. Maybe there are no good commercial solutions like in macOS because there is no market.

Even Linux has better free launchers than Windows. For example: https://github.com/qdore/Mutate

I have found this same problem with other types of applications. For some reason the macOS options are simply better. And again, this is completely unrelated to the OS. It seems there is simply no interest in the Windows world for these types of things.

For example macOS has Karabiner which allows to configure you keyboard in a myriad of ways. Terminals like iTerm are also better in macOS, maybe because of the *Nix tradition. Monitors like iStatMenus which offer you one click access to deep information on hardware, network, etc, are non existent. BetterTouchTool which allows to deeply configure gestures on your trackpad, again, nothing on Windows like it. I could go on, but you get the idea.

[Razengan]

Re: Paint.net on macOS, how do Acorn and Pixelmator (and the soon-to-come Pixelmator Pro) fare for you?

[gressquel]

Funny, I tried to go the other way but just couldnt.

The ecosystem on windows 10 is poor but then again I just download from one of the million win32 applications. I just don't use "apps" from store.

[pier25]

But those million win32 applications tend to be really outdated and poor in terms of features compared to the macOS ecosystem. At least that was what I experienced.

[zeusk]

Regardless, they're at-least usable and Microsoft cares about backward compat.

Just last week I played a game of Age of Empires II with my cousin, a game which was "released" in 1999 on a Surface with Windows 10. While on my MacBook I have issues because every major OS upgrade breaks something and I have to repurchase newer versions or give up if the dev isn't interested/around anymore.

[pier25]

I agree, Windows is much better at backwards compatibility.

OTOH I've found that it's not such a big deal in practice. In my 10+ years as a mac user I've only hit this problem a couple of times. Likewise in Windows I rarely open old outdated software.

That is of course my anecdotal and personal experience.

[nathansoz]

It's not a big deal for consumers. It's a huge deal for STEM departments in universities (a software upgrade for a hundred-thousand dollar machine can sometimes be thousands of dollars).

[agmcleod]

agreed. I have a gaming PC at home, as well as a separate gaming laptop that I use for events. I've tried coding on it, and it's just not as good. Little things like the apps you mentioned I miss. Soulver, text expander, proper twitter clients, spotlight, brew.

[lmm]

I was a Linux diehard for years but I'm very happy with my Surface Book. With "Ubuntu on Windows" you can run the usual unix command line tools; if anything it's more comfortable than OSX since you get up-to-date GNU versions rather than older GNU tools.

[baldfat]

I am also most comfortable with my OpenSUSE but Windows 10 is great and I have OpenSUSE Bash for Windows installed. It really is nice and it is case sensitive! Why is Mac OS OPTIONAL case sensitivity?

[snuxoll]

> Why is Mac OS OPTIONAL case sensitivity?

A relic from HFS of old, there's some notable applications that still fail hard on case-sensitive HFS+/APFS volumes so the default is insensitive (hey, Adobe, I'm looking at you - OS X/macOS 10 has been out for a decade and a half, get your shit together).

[baldfat]

I do contract work for Video/Audio production (Usually fix the crappy audio that they recorded UGH) I ran into that one a few times. Once all my work was over written because I capitalized the fixed files. The other time is we joined all our work into a pool and that crashed every Adobe application working on the job.

[masklinn]

> if anything it's more comfortable than OSX since you get up-to-date GNU versions rather than older GNU tools.

1. By and large, OSX ships the BSD userland not GNU

2. You can trivially add up-to-date GNU tools to OSX: install homebrew, install whichever GNU stuff you want

[damnyou]

I have better things to do with my life than prefix every command with a g.

[skinnymuch]

You don't have to. Many of the commands that you install have simple work arounds so you can use the same command.

[lmm]

Yes, sorry, "Older BSD tools" is what I meant to type.

[mbell]

That seems to depend on the task. The highest end CPU available, even the 15", is the i7-8650U which is a 1.9Ghz @ 15W part. This is also how they pull off 17hr battery life, they are putting an ultrabook processor in a 15" laptop. Current 15" MBP can be had with a i7-7920HQ, 3.1Ghz @ 45W which I would expect to be quite a bit faster for multi-core workloads.

[MikusR]

Which they run at 20W

[mbell]

i7-8650U is rated at 2.1Ghz @ 25W in it's TDP up config, so running it at 20W may get you 2.0Ghz instead of 1.9Ghz. But this doesn't tell the entire story either. Modern processors are constantly adjusting their frequencies across all cores to hit their power targets. e.g. if the thermal management can't sustain 20W in perpetuity in may actually run slower than it's rated speed. Unfortunately this isn't something that is easy to determine from most benchmarking tools. Things like geekbench will only tell you the system could maintain certain performance for the length of the test, which is usually only a couple minutes, you may find that doing longer running work will cause throttling.

If you really want to know how it'll perform under heavy workloads, you probably want to hit it with prime95 or blender for 30+ minutes and monitor core frequencies to see where it ends up running at.

[jrs95]

Do they really? Wow...fuck Apple. I have been using Mac for years but I don't want to pay that much for severely handicapped hardware. Especially when it's just in pursuit of thinness and aesthetics.

[mbell]

I assume that MikusR was talking about the i7-8650U. Apple doesn't down-TDP the processors in the MBP. I don't know where this idea even came from and it's trivial to prove it false.

[millstone]

This doesn't appear to be true. I tested my i7-6920HQ MBP with Intel Power Gadget and it reports 45-46 watts under load when on AC power, and 40 watts on battery. Reported speed is 3.1 GHz (official specs are 2.9).

[d1egoaz]

I've been trying Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and it's a great idea, I can see my self moving to windows (from Linux) in the next months when they fix the slow IO. The combination would work great for me, a terminal with Linux tools + a nice windows 10 experience (nice fonts, devices support) .

[baldfat]

It certainly feels like Mac OS is stuck in in-between land with iOS and OS X and it just feels a mess if your on a desktop with no track pad. The scroll bars are not mouse friendly. Windows 10 seems so much more stable and modern to Mac OS for the last two years. One job I use a Macbook and the OS just drives me nuts. The lack of decent short cuts drives is mind boggling.

[millstone]

You can use the Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad. Not sure what you mean by "last of decent short cuts," OS X is pretty keyboard friendly. Maybe just unfamiliarity?

[baldfat]

I've search they are not there (Oh there are TWO different shortcuts based on your keyboard??????)) http://www.noproblemmac.com/blog/2015/05/21/how-to-always-ge...

Go to Desktop (This is stupid it is Fn + F11 OR Command F3 based on what keyboard you have) Also Win - D makes a lot more sense! It is a default motion on a track pad.

File Manager - Windows (Win - E) Mac OS NOTHING

I have never seen why Mac OS gets a pass by so many people when there are clear paper cuts in its interface and it gets worse and worse over the past 10 years.

[millstone]

That damn Windows key drives me nuts - press it accidentally during a game and it kicks you out!

Anyways my usual way of going to the desktop is to just command-tab to Finder, and then command N to create a new Finder window, or any of the shortcuts in the Go menu.

Nobody is claiming that the Mac UI is perfect, but it's been way more stable and unified than Windows. Of course there was Windows 8, but even Windows 10 still has things like both the new Settings and old Control Panel, and the old start menu next to the god-awful, ad-ridden Live Tiles. I recently tried to enable automatic login on my Windows 10 laptop and was told to run "netplwiz" in the Run dialog command line. It's a mess.

[harrygeez]

This.

I like that the Mac uses the Super key for common shortcuts, which frees the control key for Emacs-style keybindings. It seems that besides i3, no other popular desktop environments allows a similar setup. I am a Mac convert after I start writing code seriously and as much as I still like Windows, I can't go back because of this.

As much as I also love Linux (I know, I love all 3 major OS for different reasons), I cannot use it as my full time desktop OS for obvious reasons. MacOS currently represents a perfect trade-off for me.

[untog]

I'm the same. I'm not at all interested in the new Macbook Pros with the touch bar and crappy keyboard, and the Surface Book 2 looks amazing. I don't even actually like macOS that much any more. And Windows has the Linux subsystem!

But. I need to do iOS development from time to time. At the very least, I need to be able to test web pages in Mac browsers. I can run a Windows VM on a Mac very easily, but I can't run a Mac VM inside Windows very easily. Sigh.

[zeveb]

I imagine that it can run Linux, right — if not now, soon. I personally much prefer Linux to both macOS & Windows, although obviously tastes differ. I get a tiling WM with no cruft, I can completely control my UI, I can get work done quickly and easily.

[pizza234]

I've been (also) working on Surface machines for a couple of years now, on Ubuntu.

They work OK on stock kernels since around 4.10 (but one must "backport" the linux-firmware package from Ubuntu Artful for having a working Wifi).

For a "non fancy" work usage (no stylus etc.; mostly keyboard and touchpad), the "only" nags are:

  - no sleep functionality
  - you can't permanently enable the Fn button, and worse, it seems that it disables itself regularly, and even worse, independenly of it being active or not, the light is off (it's not a defect; the light just turns itself off shortly after activation).

With those points in mind (point 2 is much more annoying than it reads), I think Surface machines are poor solutions for Linux users, unless the user needs to have tablet and laptop in a single machine. In fact, I'll buy the next-gen XPS 13 once it's available and mature.

On the other hand, Surface Books are the state of the art of large/work tablets. There's nothing remotely comparable: a 700gr 13.5" tablet is amazing (although the batteries don't last very long), and the fact that there is a 15" model is even more impressive.

[kanishkdudeja]

The stylus and the touch might not work perfectly with Linux.

[masklinn]

On the SB1, IIRC the touch screen worked but the dGPU, bluetooth and camera did not, you needed a patched kernel for hardware buttons and wifi, and hibernation didn't work (and the hardware didn't properly support suspend to ram). Not sure about the "tablet" mode.

[jjuel]

If the parent is using a tiling WM I doubt they need the touch or the stylus much.

[jackielii]

Same here. I can live without touch or stylus, just want a performance laptop with good screen (3:2 ratio) and keyboard.

[artursapek]

Thinkpad?

[jackielii]

Exactly! if only have have 3:2 screens!!! or better yet, a 4:3 screen!

Currently I'm buying a old X61s and going to convert it to X62: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-X62-Laptop-Review.21159...

[artursapek]

Is that ratio really so important? I have a wider ratio X1 Carbon and it has never bothered me, but I guess I wasn't used to anything in particular. The screen quality is really nice though.

[harrygeez]

Perhaps it's less evident especially if you have a multi-head setup with big monitors. But for almost every laptop now that uses display scaling to make screen content readable, screen estate is precious and the extra vertical space does make coding on a small screen much more enjoyable.

[kalleth]

You can absolutely use this for work.

My windows workflow involves a Virtualbox VM, with ~/ in the guest mounted as Z: on the windows host.

Use gvim installed direct on windows (so long as you don't need super complex plugins which shell out to utilities) to edit files in Z: which exist on the host, with PuTTy and tmux as your terminal. Done.

The thing holding windows back right now is a terminal emulator to sit ontop of WSL, and WSL's ability to run background processes properly without closing them all when i close a terminal (and to have things autostart on boot).

There are workarounds right now to solve this, though.

[ksec]

Gaming, the world has changed and this generation of Apple users has way more Gamers then what they had before.

Why do they continue to ignore Gamers on the Mac Platform.

[binthere]

- Microsoft: Gaming has been a first class citizen at Microsoft for a while and I'm not sure if we can say the same about Apple. They just put tons of money into it because they have this competitive advantage. It's not only the games they bought/publish (Minecraft, Age of Empires, Flight Simulator, etc), but the platform itself (Xbox, DirectX, etc). Windows 10 also has a "Gaming Mode" as part of the OS for performance improvement which some games might have it turned on automatically.

- Hardware: PC Gamers usually customize hardware to have pretty decent power (GPU, CPU, Memory, etc) for relatively cheap when compared to Mac. In PC market, there's hardware competition for literally every single part of the hardware. For games that require extra power, you would need a powerful machine and, while they do exist in newer generations of iMacs, it's just damn expensive. Which brings me to my next point: market.

- Market: Although Mac users grew significantly, I'd say it's still pretty small when compared to PC. If you are a game developer, especially an indie game dev, you may find how depressing it can be to publish a cross platform game. It's not super hard given the popularity of game engines such as Unity and UE4. But the issue, in my opinion, is if your game has multiplayer, for example, you're probably going to have a bad time dealing with platform differences. Aside from that, you're going to have to deal with other platform differences in a lot of different levels. At some point, you're going to ask the question: is it really worth the extra investment? You are going to delay publishing your game for probably little gain. Developing for the larger market first might make more sense. Not only for indie devs but for AAA games too.

[demonshreder]

> Microsoft: Gaming has been a first class citizen at Microsoft for a while and I'm not sure if we can say the same about Apple.

This is changing fast if not changed already. Xbox One, DX12 lock in on Universal Windows Platform and finally,

> Windows 10 also has a "Gaming Mode" as part of the OS for performance improvement which some games might have it turned on automatically.

https://www.vg247.com/2016/10/14/dota-2-windows-10-anniversa...

Valve was skeptical about Microsoft turning Windows into a walled garden when they announced DX12 only for Windows Store exclusive games, that is when they started pushing their efforts into SteamOS, moreover a stable runtime (based on Ubuntu LTS) for Linux games, which has helped _a lot_ for linux gaming.

[jamesgeck0]

You don't have to use UWP to use DX12, and you don't have to use DX12 in Windows Store games. DX12 does require WDDM 2, but that's a different bucket of worms.

Xbox Game DVR predates Game Mode; you can enable/disable them independently.

[WorldMaker]

Also, you don't even have to use the Windows Store to install UWP games. Windows 10 allows sideloading by default (since the November Update two years ago, though shortly after Valve made their stink) and since the Anniversary Update (1611) last year this time, there is a nice little installer that pops up if you double click a (signed) UWP APPX package.

So even if DX12 was restricted to UWP apps (which, reminder, it isn't) UWP apps are not restricted to the Store either, and Steam could install UWP apps, too.

[TurboHaskal]

I hope that in about two years the whole eGPU situation is sorted out so that I can have a MacBook Pro with a good CPU as my only computer.

Until then, maintaining a desktop gaming PC and buying the base MacBook Pro model every now and then seems to be more cost effective.

[masklinn]

> I hope that in about two years the whole eGPU situation is sorted out so that I can have a MacBook Pro with a good CPU as my only computer.

The primary issue for gaming on OSX is and has always been drivers. You can generally get 80~100% better framerates by running the same game on Windows (via Bootcamp).

[harrygeez]

I reckon it has something to do with the graphics stack. Have you tried running anything graphic intensive on the Mac? Every same program no matter how well-written runs faster on Windows. To be fair I haven't tried any Metal games (if they even exist?), but I guess it is somehow harder to write games that are performant on the Mac?

[always_good]

One saving grace here is that switching to OSX helped me quit my gaming addiction.

[fhood]

They are working on it, but in typical apple fashion they will not capitulate to existing standards.

[mbel]

Are you referring to any concrete facts/leaks/rumors when you say they are working on it? I can hardly see any movements from Apple in that direction.

[fhood]

No, just their pushing of metal and all the games demos they've been doing. Nothing concrete.

[baldfat]

One HUGE Issue Hardware. While the build quality is awesome the muscle power of most Macs graphically is just abysmal. Also the lack of a native Right Click!

There are plenty of Mac OS games and people don't play them.

[glhaynes]

Also the lack of a native Right Click!

Every pointing device they've made for well over a decade has had multiple clicks.

[robotresearcher]

Macs have supported right click out of the box for many years.

[baldfat]

With the Mac Mouse having a right click? No you buy an official apple mouse you have single click options only.

Also the laptops are also single click.

[mmcconnell1618]

This is incorrect. Both Apple laptops and mice support right-click out of the box. You can configure it from the System Settings -> Mouse / Trackpad.

[baldfat]

> right-click out of the box. You can configure it from the System Settings -> Mouse / Trackpad

That's not out of the box :) But an Apple Mouse can not have right click added it physically has one button but it does it in software and it doesn't work or it button bounces whenever I have tried.

95% of all Mac I have ever seen or used have Official Mice.

[megy]

I used Microsoft OS from MS-Dos v3.3 right up until they launched Vista. I have to go back every now and again for work, and it is still horrible for me. The current work machine I have requires a reboot sometimes 3 times a day for updates. Surely this can not be the norm?

Anyway, I agree with you. I have a pro at work, but recently got a plain macbook, and it is awesome. Great for even iPhone dev work.

[chx]

https://github.com/chx/chx.github.io/wiki/How-I-set-up-my-Wi... does this help?

[Jaqua]

Hmm.. Not really..

[avenoir]

I've been saying this about every model of XPS then I'd buy one and suffer through constant driver issues. The build quality is definitely there which was lacking before but the quality of drivers make me run for hills.

[dalacv]

My, how times have changed. I'm freaking old.