Well, competitors are still behind Apple. They offer worse touchpad, worse screens (it's either 16:9 or weird resolution), no macOS, worse speakers, worse microphone, worse battery.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the X series ThinkPads are the main competitor to the MacBook Pro series. IE, thin and targeted at professionals.
It's been years since an X-series has had a removable battery and the option for two of them. Decent-quality screens are a significant upcharge and even then barely match the Apple screen. And going over to their website, an X1 carbon 7th gen with a 10th gen Intel processor still uses LPDDR3, just like the Apple.
If you do a real comparison - beyond just "processor cores/speed, ram and disk quantity", you'll find that there really isn't a huge difference in price for specs and that you can comfortably buy the one you prefer and not feel ripped off.
I would say both the X and T series are MacBook Pro competitors. The T series aren't usually as compromisingly thin as the X Series but still aren't much thicker than an Ethernet port so they're still thin in my book. They're definitely way thinner than the P series machines.
P1 hits the sweet spot of thin AND pro. Same size as the X1 Extreme series, but geared toward business users. You can actually open it up and do some upgrades. RAM up to 64gb, up to a xeon processor, and the 1st gen is able to include nvidia quaddro gpus.
Ah yes, the P1 is an excellent machine and still manages to stay pretty thin. Its definitely an outlier of thinness in the P-series though, but is absolutely one which does not fit with my earlier comment of the P series being a bit thicker.
FWIW, most of the T series also have a good number of FRUs (field-replaceable units, what customers can easily swap out). Some models, especially the "s" versions, will have some soldered RAM but often the non-"s" versions will allow you to swap out both sticks. Wireless chips and SSDs are user-replaceable. Internal batteries are held in by screws and not glue so they're easy to replace when they age. Pretty easy to work on overall. My T460s is over 4 years old and still going strong.
I no longer care about removable batteries. I finally recycled my 2011 MacBook Air late last year, after 8 years of hard service doing development work on the go. The battery had half of what it once had, but the CPU and Ram could no longer keep up.
Removable batteries were more important back when batteries sucked, now they last the life of the machine.
This is just a matter of usage. MacBook Pro batteries have never lasted me more than ~3 years before signficant degredation (usually marked by swelling, needing replacement to avoid having the touchpad eject from the machine), and that number held from pre-unibody to post-retina. As an anecdote, the later generations seemed to degrade faster than the earlier ones.
Many laptops offer upgradeable RAM and some upgradeable CPUs. All laptops of my family have upgradeable RAM for instance. SSDs bays and M2 slots as well.
All LiIon batteries are around 80-85% of capacity in around 350-500 charge cycles given a decent controller and no excessive heat (which macbooks are overall bad at).
Upgradeable ram would be the only thing I’d want from Apple. With the advent of Dropbox & similar it’s been a long long time since I’ve run out of disk space. And as I’ve said before, I typically see laptops struggling to perform long before seeing their batteries give up on me.
Laugh as much as you want but to me (and many others) it actually is. I would look at other manufacturers for their hardware, but sadly it's all non-MacOs and I value this operating system above anything else for my needs (work and personal).
Except they aren't. I need a top class desktop operating system with top class unix environment support and tools. Windows10 might be getting close to a top class desktop os, but sadly WSL is years behind and simply feels like forced afterthought. Linux fills the unix env/tools box, but doesn't even gets close to desktop operating system quality bar of MacOS.
macOS is definitely not a top class UNIX environment, not even by a long shot. It is an alien hybrid of outdated BSD tools and toolchains. Even Xcode, which was amazing a decade ago, is now a joke compared to other environments and specialized tools nowadays.
Since Jobs died, the company has slowly allowed their development-focused machines and toolset to rot. The company now only caters to artists and it shows with their "Pro" offerings, including the Mac Pro.
As for the desktop features, all 3 major operating systems are the same. Claiming otherwise is not knowing how to use each of them.
I'm not sure if you're claiming that Linux is a "major desktop operating system" (desktop added for clarity based on the context of your statement), but if you are your statement is badly misinformed.
I use Linux in (many) VMs where I have to in order to run esoteric toolchains for embedded stuff. There is no distribution of Linux that provides bulletproof basic desktop usability anywhere near the level of OS X or Windows 10. Nothing even in the same ballpark. And I've used Linux since the days when Slackware came on a set of 3.5" floppies, so I'm not some Linux hater or incompetent here -- I've got a significant amount of experience with the OS in many of its flavors. When you can get any distribution of Linux to accurately handle plugging in external monitors every time, maybe we can talk.
Xcode is an excellent IDE - it's second really only to Visual Studio.
My only complaint about Macs today is the Touch Bar, because they replaced my f-keys with it and it's useless to me as a developer. That's at least partially mitigated by my das keyboard.
Nearly every other dev I know uses a MacBook Pro. The Mac Pro is a production machine for movies, it's not really part of the discussion here.
I think you're missing the point where I treat the "top class desktop operating system with top class unix environment support and tools" as a whole, and not as two separate things. To me MacOS is the top class desktop operating system with top class unix env support, nothing else gets close to this definition. Other operating systems could get close to other definitions, maybe even surpass it, but not to this one.
Sure, your needs are your needs, but the person you're replying to is saying they aren't objectively worse, not subjectively. Windows/Linux on a PC laptop is an obviously-viable tool for a great many people, and those people may want to start looking at what's available if they aren't satisfied with Apple's offerings. Personally I'm not a fan of treating laptops as anything more than nice SSH clients to the more powerful machines where I do my actual work, but again that's subjective :)
I'll amend that a bit, I assume many of the people you speak of are in my camp, and that camp is a bit different than what you described.
Mostly I don't care about OSX. Some days i actually would prefer Linux. The reason I'm on OSX though is because I've been down the Linux desktop road, many times, and between the software and/or faulty configuration experience I use avoid it.
Random problems when I'm trying to work drive me mad. I use OSX to avoid problems.
Objectively worse? No. You are right that competitors are not objectively worse for lacking MacOS. Still, there is a large population (myself included) who is most comfortable working in macOS and considers the “Apple tax” lower than the switching costs of changing OSs.
Yes, it does. As someone who does audio recording, design work and programming, Macos, with it's unix shell that allows all my programming tools to work and the excellent support by creative software, is the only OS that works.
The design tools may also work on windows, but the development story is hilariously bad. And no, WSL 1 or 2 with all their performance hits and weird edgecases don't qualify at all to a native unix shell.
Linux is superior to macos for software development, but the creative software support is non-existant.
Really, for someone like me (and I bet there are many others like me) Macos is the the only os that works.
Where I have to use Linux, I just boot up a headless VM and ssh into it from my Mac. Saves me a lot of headache trying to run a real Linux machine and deal with x and all its BS.
Objectively not, but in practice a lot of people are locked in Apple ecosystem, for long time MacBooks were the only good laptops for development with support of communicators, graphic tools etc.
It's changing with Linux and WSL, but can't blame people to stay with macOS if it works for them.
Personally I'm using linux and thinkpad, but even x1 carbon falls short to MacBooks in areas I mentioned before.
Yep, I'm using an X1 Yoga, still not nearly as nice to use as OSX on a Macbook Pro that's 3 years older than it, and that's with either Windows or Linux. Ubuntu touchpad drivers are pretty bad, the windows ones are tolerable but still fail at multi-finger gestures. I really like the touchscreen, but the display colors/look aren't nearly as good. Overally pretty disappointed for a system that's close to top-spec when compared to my base spec MBP from years earlier (but it does run my Windows applications for work which I need).
The resolution part is insane. I use my work Macbook at 125% scaling, which would be equivalent to 100% on a WQHD screen. There are some available on some very specific (expensive) ThinkPads from a generation I don't want and the new Ryzen ASUS Zephyrus G14 (but it seems like they absolutely don't want to sell it, I seriously have found no listing for it after spending a long time hunting down the actual model code).
There are some 4k models, but those bring more weird fractional scaling problems with them (especially bad on Linux), have battery life and are usually super expensive.
Oh ... and it's all 14 or 15" models. I'd happily take a 17 or 19" laptop - I just want enough portability so I can carry it around in a bag while commuting and have it on a desk most of the time, but, while there are some okay 17" offerings (barely any "pro" devices, though, so no swappable RAM) there is not one (apart from the insanely expensive ZBook) offering with a higher than FHD screen.
What the fuck?! Why? Don't most people use their laptops as only somewhat portable work stations? Am I the only one who finds a larger screen with more content useful?
Razor has a 17” laptop that can be configured to have a 4K display, but you also have to upgrade the GPU to a RTX 2080 Max-Q. The RAM and storage is end user replaceable though and you’d have an absolute beast of a machine that could handle pretty much anything you’ll ever throw at it. It is $3700 though.
https://www.razer.com/gaming-laptops/razer-blade-pro/shop
Let's ignore no 120/144/240 Hz screens, no good GPU (or any dedicated GPU in most models), no CUDA, no Zen2, no workstation CPUs, no high-capacity RAM, finicky keyboard, bad warranty, no Linux support, bad Windows support, no proper OpenGL, no Vulkan, no Direct3D, no 32-bit software, no Ethernet, no FireWire, no USB-A, no optical drive, no HDMI, no DP, no VGA...
Definitely all advantages!
Let's also ignore all vendors with laptops that have better hardware, better warranty or better prices.
FWIW all those you mention can be added with a USB device (even DOS, you can boot FreeDOS via a CD or even external floppy on modern PC) whereas the stuff jfkebwjsbx mentions cannot (except the optical drive).
I use the VGA port in many conference talks I give. Modern, digital projectors are still not a guarantee and it is very awkward to go ask around for another laptop or a dongle.
I have FireWire hardware still around that I have no plan on replacing until it breaks.
Around half my games are 32-bit.
I have a library of BluRays with my favorite shows at home. I also bought some kid shows for my daughter 6 months ago that came in a DVD set.
But yeah, go laugh and make a comparison with PS/2. Everyone I listed is still in use today and many laptop vendors provide ports for them. Some will go out soon, some won't for years.
For digital media, especially for kids, there are many better alternatives -- including ripping the DVDs, copying them to a MicroSD card and buying a cheap Fire tablet. But, Disney+, with an iPad ($329), and Apple Arcade (no ad ridden, play to win games) is a godsend for kids.
My time is worth way more than dealing with ripping DVDs, to be honest.
Yes, streaming platforms are convenient, but no, I don't want to be limited to whatever Disney+ or Apple Arcade wants me or my kid to watch/play. I choose what shows/games are worth, not the other way around. I will pay to watch a show in streaming, but I don't pay streaming to have something to watch. If that makes sense...
If I was going to play optical media, I’d be more interested in getting it to play on my TV than my laptop. Every time I played a DVD on the last laptop I had with a DVD drive it was always a nightmare to deal with power, HDMI, and deal with the laptops tendency to go to sleep. I’d rather just buy a dedicated optical player for the TV and be done with it.
Just because you continue to use VGA, PS2, and FireWire doesn’t mean that everyone needs that. You have extremely niche needs, especially in a laptop, it’s utterly unsurprising that Apple won’t add the hardware to support them.
First of all, I haven't said I use PS/2. Quite the opposite. Trying to group all ports in the same place as a very outdated one is being intellectually dishonest. Things like FireWire and VGA are already on the way out and are not present in new laptops, but laptops used today still have them.
If I have "extremely niche needs", then why do almost all laptops sold include Ethernet/RJ-45, several USB-A ports, HDMI output, card readers, etc.?
Not everyone has bought into $50 USB-C dongle land.
They’re not done migrating to USB-C, that’s why. Every single year non-mac laptops slowly get thinner and trade another USB-A port for USB-C. The fact that all my work colleagues were issued a USB-C dock is going to accelerate this trend.
I can’t tell you the last time I saw a coworker directly use anything other than the USB-C port on their laptops, even on Lenovos with other ports. It’s only a matter of time.
Honestly, the “$50 USB-C dongle” has been great. I plug in a single cord and it provides two displays, power, USB, and Ethernet. This is everything that work laptop docks promised decades ago, except it’s an open standard! If I were to switch from a Mac to a Dell or a Lenovo, I wouldn’t need to change a thing about my current setup. Heck, I don’t even use an Apple power charger when traveling anymore, since my Anker is smaller and can barely keep my MBP topped off.
Have you looked at the latest line of business class Dells? Most of them don’t have Ethernet ports nor do they have card readers. Most of the consumer line computers don’t either. Dell is still the number one or number two PC vendor.
>> I use the VGA port in many conference talks I give. Modern, digital projectors are still not a guarantee and it is very awkward to go ask around for another laptop or a dongle
Ever thought about buying your own dongle? Sincle you give many conference talks it might be a great investment :)
High refresh rate screen is the only thing I'd want from that list. I'll upgrade my 2017 MBP when/if a model with >120Hz display comes out. For me it's been the greatest thing in consumer space since HDD to SSD upgrades. Having made the switch on desktop, going back to 60 Hz makes all motions (even scrolling a web page) appear incredibly choppy and distracting for a hour or two until my eyes readapt.
I would argue that macOS isn't the selling point it used to be but it's still less annoying to me to work with than WSL on Windows 10 or wrestling with a Linux distro and shitty display drivers.
If hardware quality and design is desirable, there are a several options on the market. Surface Pro are extremely nice if you're into Windows. X1 Carbon is a nice option if you are after a durable and compact laptop. Razer Blade is basically a performant gaming laptop in a MacBook Pro body (though you don't have to play games on it).
Still, even with all the software and hardware issues of the recent years, there is something in Apple's computers that makes me want to keep using them.
We have some at work and I don't think they are worth the money. Same for the Surface Book. I have it as my main laptop now but I think I will go back to a HP ZBook.
They don't have the TrackPoint, only glossy screens, not even 16:9, no Linux support, only one battery instead of two replacable ones, and so on.