DonationCoder.com Forum
Main Area and Open Discussion => Living Room => Topic started by: wraith808 on May 29, 2015, 06:25 PM
-
I started out on a great adventure a few years ago. At least, what I term a great adventure. After my Linux foray and failure (or rather, not failure, just finding out it wasn't practical for me), I figured since MacOS is based on BSD, I'd try it. Also to see what the big fuss was. I'd started on Apple (back with the ][e) and worked at a place where I had to use one. But that was back in the 90s, and I thought with all of the hubub, I must be missing something. And admittedly, I wanted to make money on the App store.
So, my adventure, and what I learned. All of this is personal, but it is my experience. So, I purchased one a few years ago (a MBP i5 late 2011) to see if I'd like it and to hopefully develop iOS apps and get rich. I found out that it takes a lot more than development skills to get rich making iOS apps, so I gave that up.
1. I don't like Macbooks.
Though there are a few cool things about the Mac and its software (I'll miss Typed (http://realmacsoftware.com/typed), Ulysses (http://www.ulyssesapp.com/) (although I just found out they have an ipad version, so I'm happy again), Storyist (http://storyist.com/index.html) (although I still have it on my ipad), and Marked (http://marked2app.com/) (though I did make my own barebones alternative (http://thinkshui.net/software/markdownbuddy/))), even after 3 years with it as my only laptop, I still am not comfortable with it or the environment. I even tried loading a couple of different options for running windows apps on it, but those virtualized environments were slower- don't let them tell you different. And since I still was working in windows on my desktop and at work, I noticed it.
2. Macbooks keep their price pretty well- if your next purchase will be a PC.
I think that's because they're overpriced. People say all of these advantages why they're willing to pay a premium. I call BS after using it. There was no reason for me to pay that much for that machine. But here, three years later, I ordered a new Dell (http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-13-7347-laptop/pd) for only $40. I used my proceeds from selling it to pay for the rest.
3. The days of getting rich off the app store are over.
I noted it above, but Apple has skewed the app store so that the only people that make money are those that already have it. It's still possible for those that don't have the money to pimp their software to make it... but that's more happenstance than by plan. I think that's explained on Cliffski's blog (he makes some indie games, and tried to dip into the app store with mixed success) in the article Implications of a global market on random success (http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2015/04/29/implications-of-a-global-market-on-random-success/).
Depressing.
4. You can get a lot of money off just for calling the company.
So, I ordered the computer from Dell. With the standard support + accidental damage for 1 year, the version I wanted was $800. I was able to find it on the microsoft store (and if you haven't looked into their signature editions, it's a good way to go... the same computers without the bloatware) after a special promotion for $40 less. That didn't include tax, so it would have been a bit less, but it included 2 years of enhanced support and accidental damage, and it was going to ship out and be to me within 3 days. Dell was a couple of weeks. So I called and explained to the guy in retention (it says a lot that they have to have a retention department). He said he couldn't give me the extra support (didn't really want it anyway), but he could give me $75 off. I said, that would only make up for the difference in price... not the timeline nor shipping. So he made it $100 off, with a 50% chance at expediting the assembly, and FedEx overnight shipping.
All that just for complaining?
The squeaky wheel really does get the oil.
In the end, after trying a Mac, and trying Linux, I just prefer Windows, for all its warts and problems. It works better for me, and I'm more productive on it. Who would have thought?
-
I guess I'm not very surprised.
I sold my iMac a few weeks ago after a few years with it.
I never got into it. My first experiences were that if I wanted to do anything, I had to drop down to the command line. Yuck. That's what I wanted to avoid, and the Mac has no options to avoid it, unlike Windows. I thought Apple was better than that. Despite the nice smooth graphics, they really don't work on making anything much nicer in the OS.
There were other things as well, but overall, I just didn't like OS X.
Now, I do have to grant it to Apple that they make damn good hardware. No complaints there. Their hardware is far superior to the beige box Windows PC you get from other companies. Even my Dell laptop is nowhere near as good as my iMac hardware was.
However, that doesn't make up for how stubborn OS X and Apple are in so many ways. There's the "Apple way" and the highway. I'm unlikely to get another Mac unless I really really need it for work, which is highly unlikely.
-
However, that doesn't make up for how stubborn OS X and Apple are in so many ways. There's the "Apple way" and the highway. I'm unlikely to get another Mac unless I really really need it for work, which is highly unlikely.
-Renegade
Same here... and the hardware *is* really nice, though PC manufacturers are catching up.
Just one example of how frustrating it is... how hard is it to make the buttons on the window frames consistent in their operation across apps? And why when I maximize do I have to reserve space for the dock? Only if I go fullscreen is that not a problem... but sometimes(most of the time?), you want that extra real estate, but don't want to go full screen.
-
Macs are unique beasts. People talk about the Apple eco-system and how your iPhone, your iPad, your Apple TV, and Mac are all connected as one and work as one. To a large extent that is true, but again....Macs are unique beasts.
Macs (and their OS) do things differently than any other computers on the planet. Some things better and some things worse...even if you run Windows on your Mac using Boot Camp, you'll still be doing some things differently than you would on a 'real' Windows machine.
When it comes to Macs, it really is a case of either you get it or you don't. I don't get how Macs work, have never gotten how Macs work, and will never get how Macs work. Every time I use one I get this claustrophobic feeling of being trapped in a box with arbitrary rules. I'm not in Apple's target demographic, though, and I'm fine with it.
As for quality of hardware, you can find some wonderfully built laptops that can rival a Macbook, but you won't find Dell selling one and you will pay just as much for it as you did that Macbook Pro. They are rare, but they are out there....up to each person to decide if they are worth the price or not.
-
OS X is the living proof that it is possible to create a UNIX which sucks even more than Linux. (Although, technically, "MacOS is based on BSD" is not as true as it sounds, given that there was NeXT before and Darwin is more like a Frankenstein's Monster made of SysV and BSD/4.3 ingredients with an awfully fucked up kernel.)
I welcome your decision, anyway.
-
As for quality of hardware, you can find some wonderfully built laptops that can rival a Macbook, but you won't find Dell selling one and you will pay just as much for it as you did that Macbook Pro.
-Innuendo
Dell XPS 13 (2015) (http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/laptops-portable-pcs/laptops-and-netbooks/dell-xps-13-2015-1279013/review) is getting good reviews and being called a MacBook Air and Zenbook killer, at much lower price. The other one that's also looking good is the HP Spectre x360.
Same here... and the hardware *is* really nice, though PC manufacturers are catching up.
-wraith808
Speaking of hardware only, the new Google Chromebook Pixel 2 (2015) is being compared favourably to the Apple Macbook 2015, there are loads of head-to-head reviews. Of course the conclusion always is that the Pixel is overkill for Chrome OS. However, if one had already bought into Chrome OS and is able to install Linux on it as well, then it might even things out a bit more.
-
As for quality of hardware, you can find some wonderfully built laptops that can rival a Macbook, but you won't find Dell selling one and you will pay just as much for it as you did that Macbook Pro.
-Innuendo
Dell XPS 13 (2015) (http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/laptops-portable-pcs/laptops-and-netbooks/dell-xps-13-2015-1279013/review) is getting good reviews and being called a MacBook Air and Zenbook killer, at much lower price. The other one that's also looking good is the HP Spectre x360.
-dr_andus
Dell's site had very good prices on a basic version of the xps 13 a couple of months ago (no touch screen, I forget what else was different). Unfortunately that version seem to be no longer on offer....
-
I ordered a Dell Precision M3800 (http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m3800-workstation/pd?ref=PD_OC) for a client a few months back. It's extremely light, fast, and has an easy to use well laid out keyboard. Text on the 4k screen is indeed just as tiny as one would expect...but it does run nicely at lower resolutions that are easier on older eyes.
-
My best friend just ordered the non-Touch version of the XPS 13 a couple months ago. He absolutely loves the thing. Takes it with him wherever he goes, even from room to room with him when he's at home. He's still in the honeymoon period, though, and he often gets hyper-critical of shortcomings after the honeymoon period is over with his purchases so we'll see...
Apparently, you can still order them, but you have to call Dell in order to do it & they don't take orders on their web site for it anymore. How weird...wonder if a product refresh is in the works for Windows 10? Unless it's a dire emergency, no one should buy a laptop this close to a OS release date.
-
My unboxing photos of my inspiron 7000. I'm satisfied with the upgrade.
http://imgur.com/a/5YvIs#0
-
My only experience with Mac:
Went into my old work place, and they asked if I could get the specs for an old POS Apple Computer they found in one of the storage rooms. (One of those that just looks like an old CRT TV) - It took me a good minute to find out how to turn it on...then when it was on, I tried to find the browser (couldn't) - Then tried to find the control panel (couldn't) - Then tried to find any sort of reference to what the hell I was doing.....After 30 minutes, I gave up, turned the machine off, and they put it back in the storage room (Where I hope it will stay until it rots).
-
The thing that gets me about Mac users is...
Well, I am also one of those people that don't "get" Mac. I've accepted that this is true and that I never will "get" it, just like Innuendo above. I always thought there really was something to "get" though, that there really was some identifiable, useful difference - an advantage. In terms of hardware this was arguably true for a long time, at least for non-custom builds, and still is to *some* degree in the laptop area. But Windows machines are catching up steadily, and with the hardware inside being essentially identical for years now, soon there will be little overall difference physically.
I do see OS X doing a number of pretty nice things that I would count as advantages... but they're strangely *not* the thing that *most* Mac users I know actually like or even use much. In fact, having lived with a Mac user for a while now, and knowing several others over the years, it's amazing to me how little they take advantage of even what OS X *does* offer (nevermind the things it's missing that they could benefit from).
But here's what's confusing to me: Mac users are, as a whole, very loyal to and "satisfied" with their platform. If you ask most of them they'll sing its praises, how easy it is to use, how "intuitive", etc. But have you ever actually watched and lived with a Mac user for a long period of time? They have just as many frustrations and issues with their computers as Windows or Linux users! True story. I've seen hard freezes, random reboots, inability to shut down, crashing apps, install/uninstall issues, and much more. Macs aren't, on the whole, more stable or reliable than any other machine, nor more easy to troubleshoot. And when you start to look into the world of troubleshooting Mac issues you discover there's a whole ugly underbelly there. Threads 10s or 100s of pages long in Apple's support forums of users reporting the same issues, like problems with switching between onboard and discrete graphics in laptops (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4766577?start=0&tstart=0). And these are issues that aren't necessarily solved between hardware revisions. And new issues crop up with every new piece of hardware, despite how minor many of the iterations are!
Perhaps even worse, in my eyes, they often use their computers in the most naive and ignorant ways. For example, OS X doesn't (as far as I know) have a really easy way to minimize/maximize a window (rather than use "full screen") by clicking something (on Windows you just click the entry on the taskbar and the app comes up and then minimizes again, easy and clean). So many Mac users I know just *drag the window to the edge of the screen* when they want to see something behind it, or another app, then *drag the window back afterward*. This is incredibly cumbersome and time consuming, and it means that your windows are almost always in slightly different places because you're dragging them arbitrarily around. This makes difficult to develop really good muscle memory for where buttons and functions are, for one thing. OS X has a decent way to deal with this, which is a couple of hotkeys/shortcuts like Command-H and Command-M (hide/minimize), but no Mac user I know uses them! I suspect it's because hotkeys are, for them, "too techy" or advanced or something.
The reality actually is that Macs and OS X in particular *can* be pretty awesome for advanced users as you almost need to be one to use the OS properly and efficiently (ironic!) *and* it's got BSD underpinnings so there's a pretty sweet commandline, piping, and all kinds of other stuff going on there that's fun for power users... But *most* users actually use the OS very inefficiently and suffer from and struggle with its limitations or design choices fairly frequently (whether they realize it or not). Take the still-batshit-crazy-to-me behavior of OS X (and Mac for as long as I've known) of separating applications and their windows. Why do I want MS Word to be open and sitting there in the background *if there are no documents open in it*? How many times have I seen a Mac user using some high-memory application, then close all its windows but *leave the application running* because *closing all windows does not close the app*? (hint: many, many times)
Granted on Windows there are occasionally some awkward things that result from the Windows behavior being opposite (applications are defined by their windows and closing all windows usually closes the app), for example applications that always want to have *some* document open, so if you close the last one it creates a new, default, blank document (many applications work around this by having a background "workspace"). Hardcore Mac users will tell you that the advantage of having these floating windows that are not "contained" by their parent app and a "workspace" is that you can more easily drag and drop things between apps, a function that Windows has in a more limited capacity as far as I know, and one which I think is theoretically useful. But practically I've actually *never* seen an average Mac user do any of this fancy drag-and-drop between apps. So once again some theoretically advanced capability of OS X goes underutilized.
In the end I think this all goes a long way toward explaining why Apple may be merging iOS and OS X in the end. Much less of iOS's functionality is wasted simply because it has less functionality. So much of OS X that Apple has to maintain is really being lost on the majority of their users. They've been steadily alienating their power users while profits soar, so I think they're on the right track, at least as a business. If they go through with it they can probably reduce complexity of their core OS (and fragmentation) by 75% while maintaining 95% of their market. Win!...
But I'll never be a Mac user. :D
- Oshyan
-
My Dell XPS 13 owning friend pointed out to me that one can still order an XPS 13 (or just check out pricing) from this (http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-13-9343-laptop/pd?ref=PD_Family) web page.
-
My Dell XPS 13 owning friend pointed out to me that one can still order an XPS 13 (or just check out pricing) from this (http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-13-9343-laptop/pd?ref=PD_Family) web page.
-Innuendo
thanks Innuendo, apparently that model is only available in the US; they also have a not quite so cheap model (http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/xps-13-9343-laptop/pd?refid=xps-13-9343-laptop&baynote_bnrank=0&baynote_irrank=0&~ck=baynoteSearch&isredir=true#overrides=) for the UK market, but they seem to have decided to go full price for the German market. (I got chatting with someone on their German site - they also say the offers change every week and they have no idea what's coming next.)
@Oshyan, interesting description of how things work (or dont) in the Mac world. I think a lot of people originally went for Macs because they had style compared to stodgy old beige Windows :-) Not so relevant any more.
-
tomos: yes, style over substance! I think you may be right, at least to some degree. It also may be true that Macs actually were "easier to use" somehow, in the past, but as Windows has evolved to be easier and more hand-holding, and OS X has evolved to have more features (overall), perhaps they've converged more than not.
It reminds me of the classic and still-repeated "Macs are better for artists" BS which only ever had a logical basis nearly 2 decades ago when Macs had more creative-oriented software and better graphics capability (hardware-wise and OS-support-wise) than Windows. There was a period of maybe 5 years where those differences were really true and clearly evident, and another 5 years or so of decline where the differences were rapidly diminishing, but there were still some advantages for artists and creatives of being on a Mac. That period ended at least 10 years ago though, and PCs have been as good as - or often better than - Macs at doing graphics and other creative tasks since then. Yet so many people *still* to this day will repeat the "Macs are better for artists" BS.
The Mac's main remaining advantage at this point is reputation, the *idea* that it's easier to use. We all know how the placebo effect works, right? And confirmation bias? And over-justification? All of these logical failings are factors in the ongoing success of the Mac desktop platform, in my opinion. Which probably boils down largely to good marketing and product positioning.
- Oshyan
-
tomos: yes, style over substance! I think you may be right, at least to some degree. It also may be true that Macs actually were "easier to use" somehow, in the past, but as Windows has evolved to be easier and more hand-holding, and OS X has evolved to have more features (overall), perhaps they've converged more than not.
It reminds me of the classic and still-repeated "Macs are better for artists" BS which only ever had a logical basis nearly 2 decades ago when Macs had more creative-oriented software and better graphics capability (hardware-wise and OS-support-wise) than Windows. There was a period of maybe 5 years where those differences were really true and clearly evident, and another 5 years or so of decline where the differences were rapidly diminishing, but there were still some advantages for artists and creatives of being on a Mac. That period ended at least 10 years ago though, and PCs have been as good as - or often better than - Macs at doing graphics and other creative tasks since then. Yet so many people *still* to this day will repeat the "Macs are better for artists" BS.
The Mac's main remaining advantage at this point is reputation, the *idea* that it's easier to use. We all know how the placebo effect works, right? And confirmation bias? And over-justification? All of these logical failings are factors in the ongoing success of the Mac desktop platform, in my opinion. Which probably boils down largely to good marketing and product positioning.
- Oshyan
-JavaJones
Everything boils down to marketing and positioning, in all honesty. From relationships with people to relationships with ... everything else. It also boils down to what do they think about me, and what can I make them think about me. Which is the mac's great selling point. They hired true designers for their products long before most other computer companies ever thought that they needed to. Rather than just engineers, they managed every part of the process... even to the point of managing your final interaction with it.
As far as the style... that's one thing I'm finding out again. I like good bags. Especially to carry my laptop around in. And lots of them. So why is it so hard to find a nice bag that fits a PC laptop? The widescreen is less than an inch difference... but it might as well be a mile.
*sigh*
-
The Mac's main remaining advantage at this point is reputation, the *idea* that it's easier to use. We all know how the placebo effect works, right? And confirmation bias? And over-justification? All of these logical failings are factors in the ongoing success of the Mac desktop platform, in my opinion. Which probably boils down largely to good marketing and product positioning.
-JavaJones
As the endlessly quotable Randall Munroe of xkcd has pointed out, over-using "placebo effects" has it own problems!
If I were to have had the energy and motivation (and a subjunctive mood?), I would have made a few charts of the top 25 commands on *three* OS's - Windows, Mac, and a couple variants of Linux.
Linux gets all fancy because it's essentially the only one that separates "the Kernel" from the "User Interface". Neither Windows or Mac OS X does that. So it's essentially new OS'es every time, and I keep saying MS must have some nasty trademarks on it that prevent the Linux guys from just creating a duplicate Right Click menu.
So, going back to this thing, OS X isn't all that "easier to use" - Remember how Win XP refuses to die - so the same "arguments" have to apply and back in 2004 that was all about security, not ease of use.
-
The Mac's main remaining advantage at this point is reputation, the *idea* that it's easier to use.-JavaJones
Well, technically the Mac *is* easier to use by virtue of the fact that OS X software usually has one-third the options and settings of something comparable on Windows so therefore, there being less to learn makes it easier to use.
-
The Mac's main remaining advantage at this point is reputation, the *idea* that it's easier to use.-JavaJones
Well, technically the Mac *is* easier to use by virtue of the fact that OS X software usually has one-third the options and settings of something comparable on Windows so therefore, there being less to learn makes it easier to use.
-Innuendo
Nope. That's fallacy. After having tried to get into it as my *only* laptop for 4 years, it's decidedly *not* easier to use.
-
Intrigued by the "Apple make better hardware" at the top of this thread? They use motherboards from Foxconn just like many PCs - as I understand it they are pretty much identical and quality. They use standard graphics cards (usually a generation or two behind window), standard intel cpu, RAM and hard disks and SSDs
Apart from the white box with an apple on it what is so much better than a bog standard Windows laptop?
For the price you should get gold plated keys !!!
Given the number of people using Mac these days I get about the same proportion of Mac users phoning up and saying "my Mac is very slow" as I do Windows users. In 7 years I have only had one person phone me and say can you help - I use Linux.
-
Intrigued by the "Apple make better hardware" at the top of this thread? They use motherboards from Foxconn just like many PCs - as I understand it they are pretty much identical and quality. They use standard graphics cards (usually a generation or two behind window), standard intel cpu, RAM and hard disks and SSDs
Apart from the white box with an apple on it what is so much better than a bog standard Windows laptop?
For the price you should get gold plated keys !!!
Given the number of people using Mac these days I get about the same proportion of Mac users phoning up and saying "my Mac is very slow" as I do Windows users. In 7 years I have only had one person phone me and say can you help - I use Linux.
-Carol Haynes
The design. And from working on them before, it's a lot easier to work on once you get past the mandatory you're not supposed to be in here locks. The art doesn't just extend from the outside, it carries to the inside. At least, the last time I had to work in there. It's one of the things that made them so far ahead on the battery and heat dissipation for so long.
-
What a cool discussion!
The Apple thing really is basically a political thing. That is, the details of it aren't the issue, it's the superficial stuff that everyone is talking about. Even the specs people throw around are superficial specs, that ultimately either don't really matter or is a purely marketing point. These things matter to non-techies, but for power users (like most here) we don't care that much.
You can't criticize Apple's success. All this so called BS has helped them succeed in record breaking fashion. So there's your business 101 lesson. When the Apple vs PC talk was really starting to get hot, I was shocked by how little my non-computer friends knew about computers, and how passionate they were about Apples. That's when I realized that this is not about practical issues, regardless of what was being said. They would say things like easy to use, but there are no grounds to any of it.
If a poweruser uses a Mac, it's not going to be any easier than a Windows. And a lot of the complaints also have to do with what the Macs come pre-installed with vs. a Windows computer with nothing on it. Or driver installation. These are difficult things for non techies. So that took a while for me to realize. I realized my friend's complaint was simply avoiding having to go to the Epson website and downloading/installing a driver vs having to do that on Windows. This is what gets called "Macs are easier to use."
But that's like a nothing issue for someone heavily involved with computers. We don't even blink at that or think about it being easy or difficult. That's the difference.
Now Macs are more popular and much more widely used than 10 years ago. They are even being used in large corporations and for pretty hardcore enterprise activity. And the truth is it's no easier than whatever they were complaining about on windows. They still need the IT guy who knows what he's doing to fix all the problems. What's happened is that they are being used in more powerful ways and running into the same things they were complaining about with Windows.
Just politics in the end.
-
The Apple thing really is basically a political thing. That is, the details of it aren't the issue, it's the superficial stuff that everyone is talking about. Even the specs people throw around are superficial specs, that ultimately either don't really matter or is a purely marketing point. These things matter to non-techies, but for power users (like most here) we don't care that much.
-superboyac
How... politics? Or is that just a general term?
-
The Apple thing really is basically a political thing. That is, the details of it aren't the issue, it's the superficial stuff that everyone is talking about. Even the specs people throw around are superficial specs, that ultimately either don't really matter or is a purely marketing point. These things matter to non-techies, but for power users (like most here) we don't care that much.
-superboyac
How... politics? Or is that just a general term?
-wraith808
Yes, sorry...I meant it more for the analogy, not literally. Maybe marketing is the better term, but to me it feels like politics.
Like when they say macs are safer than pc's...that feels like a political statement to me. It seems to be a ridiculous statement if it is to be taken seriously.
Why are macs safer than pcs? because it comes pre-installed with an AV program? OK, well with a pc you just go download/install whatever av you want. So the distinguishing factor here is what come pre-installed. That's makes it a stupid point to make, at least with that sort of wording. If the argument is based around what should or shouldn't be pre-installed, that's something else, and I'll argue a much more reasonable discussion. However, the discussion is better, but still such a insignificant issue in the grand scheme of things.
SO...maybe the mac OS is inherently safer than a PC. Well, that's not true. Since 80% of the world is using pc's compared to macs, the real reason is that bad stuff is targeted for pc's because it will affect more people, so the bad guys feel more successful in their efforts. It's like criminal supply/demand.
But now that more people are using macs, well, macs are becoming less safe as more things are targeted at them, or included in their schemes. So again, nothing to do with the actual technical stuff, just about relative number of people using them.
Macs are easier to use. Well, again...yes it's easier to use for the typical person who is going to be limited to web browsing, emailing, phone syncing, document writing. And why? again, mostly because the tools are pre-installed, that's it. Or the drivers are pre-installed, or easier to install. Again, rather insignificant points, but big deals to people who just don't want to deal with that stuff.
But again, macs are much more in use now than years ago. The geeks are now using macs the way they used pc's. In this context, they are no easier to use than a pc. You have to get the software like a pc, install it yourself, etc. You will still have to go into the mac file browser a lot, you have to use the command line thing a lot, etc. No different than using a pc in hardcore fashion.
the interface...whatever. basically the same. windows...close/minimize buttons in the corner...shortcut bar on bottom, taskbar on bottom for windows....menus on top. i mean, they are 90% the same thing.
Once you start using a computer beyond the standard stuff, it's all very similar.
-
this kind of half-on/three-quarters-off topic :p
One of the things that make macs attractive is lovely screens:
I know this from monitors: once you've worked with a good one, it's hard to even imagine going back.
So I've been looking for a laptop with a good IPS screen.
I was looking at 13" notebooks for a while, but have moved up to 15" because the 13" ones are too expensive :-/
What is driving me crazy is this:
a laptop with a good screen will cost 100+ more than a similar model - but that similar one (without the good screen) will have: a more powerful CPU; up to double the harddrive and memory sizes. (This in EU-land - this might not be as extreme in the US or elsewhere.)
And then seeing the one I want to buy with the good screen -- but again with better specs -- for 150+ dollars less in the US.
(FWIW I've been looking mainly at DELL models lately.)
It makes buying stuff here a painful experience :(
Share the pain :-*
a pain shared is a pain halved
-
Mine actually has a pretty good screen. If I wasn't keeping it within the parameters of paying what I received for my MBP, there are some really good screens out there for $1200-$1500 or so in the 13" range.
http://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/Laptops/spectre-x360-211501--1#!&TabName=vao - 13.3" diagonal Quad HD LED-backlit touchscreen (2560 x 1440)
http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-13-9343-laptop/pd?oc=dncwt5131b&model_id=xps-13-9343-laptop - 13.3-inch UltraSharp™ QHD+ (3200 x 1800) InfinityEdge Touch Display
Those were the two I looked at... but there are several others in that same display range.
The thing that really peeved me looking at them was the fact that they were all "new technology", i.e. SSD. And I just don't trust an SSD as my only HDD, and the fact that you wouldn't get enough space... I want a minimum of 500GB, which in SSD is exorbitantly expensive.
-
The thing that really peeved me looking at them was the fact that they were all "new technology", i.e. SSD. And I just don't trust an SSD as my only HDD, and the fact that you wouldn't get enough space... I want a minimum of 500GB, which in SSD is exorbitantly expensive.
-wraith808
As I noted here (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=41147.msg383742#msg383742) yesterday, SSD capacities are growing and prices are dropping rapidly, leading some analysts to predict the demise of the HDD altogether within a few years.
As of today, you can get a 500GB SSD from Samsung or Crucial for about $175, and Samsung gives you a 5 year warranty. That's still several times the cost of a 500GB HDD, but no manufacturer will give more than a 3 year warranty on any HDD and most won't give more than 1 year. That tells you everything you need to know about the reliability of the current generation of SSDs. And of course, in a laptop, an SSD has the advantage of being impervious to shocks and magnetic fields.
-
Mine actually has a pretty good screen. If I wasn't keeping it within the parameters of paying what I received for my MBP, there are some really good screens out there for $1200-$1500 or so in the 13" range.
http://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/Laptops/spectre-x360-211501--1#!&TabName=vao - 13.3" diagonal Quad HD LED-backlit touchscreen (2560 x 1440)
http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-13-9343-laptop/pd?oc=dncwt5131b&model_id=xps-13-9343-laptop - 13.3-inch UltraSharp™ QHD+ (3200 x 1800) InfinityEdge Touch Display
-wraith808
I cant help thinking that they are making a *lot* of profit in this corner of the market. We need a bunch more competition at this level to bring the prices down imo.
The one I was looking at last night (Dell Inspiron E5550) - the cheapest offer atm is 930 (you'll have to wait three weeks for that); to buy instantly you will have to pay over 1,000 euros - this is obviously because it got good reviews and is selling well.
It's like bleeding bitcoin without the resale value :-/
If we look at the table below - it's only a rough comparison, but can anyone justify the price difference - which appears to be mainly because of an IPS screen (?)
Both 15.6" models from Dell
| Inspiron 15 5558 | Inspiron 15 5550 |
| i7 | i5 |
| FHD | FHD IPS Matt |
| 8GB | 8GB |
| 1TB | 500GB |
| 4GB G.Card | On board |
| €699 | ~€1,000 |
Okay, the 5550 could have other improvements, but they're both marketed as 'mid-range' laptops.
(The 5558 is relatively new here so I havent seen any decent reviews yet.)
All I want is that they slap a decent screen on the left there and add at the most 150 euros to the price.
^ That would be fair now :D
-
^that's a sort of a rhetorical question above - there may be other reasons for the price difference - but it does definitely reflect a trend here (.eu), and it's a trend that started with Apple.
-
One of the features I appreciate about Macs is (was?) the reliable functionality of booting from external media. I haven't tried recently, but from what I gather this still works pretty well. I find this type of thing helpful for trying other operating systems and performing maintenance.
My experience with PCs (at least for notebooks) has been that this functionality doesn't tend to work that reliably if it works at all. Of course it may just be the hardware I've been using :)
-
As for quality of hardware, you can find some wonderfully built laptops that can rival a Macbook, but you won't find Dell selling one and you will pay just as much for it as you did that Macbook Pro.
-Innuendo
Dell XPS 13 (2015) (http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/laptops-portable-pcs/laptops-and-netbooks/dell-xps-13-2015-1279013/review) is getting good reviews and being called a MacBook Air and Zenbook killer, at much lower price. The other one that's also looking good is the HP Spectre x360.
-dr_andus
I gave my Inspiron 7000 to my daughter and wife to share... and got one of these. It *really* is nice. I'll post some comparisons of the two. They're both 13", but it's amazing how much smaller the XPS is.
-
As for quality of hardware, you can find some wonderfully built laptops that can rival a Macbook, but you won't find Dell selling one and you will pay just as much for it as you did that Macbook Pro.
-Innuendo
Dell XPS 13 (2015) (http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/laptops-portable-pcs/laptops-and-netbooks/dell-xps-13-2015-1279013/review) is getting good reviews and being called a MacBook Air and Zenbook killer, at much lower price. The other one that's also looking good is the HP Spectre x360.
-dr_andus
I gave my Inspiron 7000 to my daughter and wife to share... and got one of these. It *really* is nice. I'll post some comparisons of the two. They're both 13", but it's amazing how much smaller the XPS is.
-wraith808
I looked at reviews and YT videos about the XPS13 a while back, it's a lovely looking machine :-*
-
I've been using an Apple PC yes, it's a PC, not some mythological maaaaac with OSX as my work laptop since October last year.
It's way overpriced and I'd never cash out for one myself, but the hardware is pretty good. The screen is amazing, and the build quality is pretty good - it's ~1kg lighter than my old laptop, the way the lid lines up is nice, and the magsafe power cord is wonderful (shame on Apple for patenting something that obvious, bastards!). It's extremely silent most of the time, but if you put a bit of CPU+GPU stress on it, it gets veeeery hot and sounds like a jet engine.
There's a few nice things about OSX. Like, iTerm2 just works a bit better than conEmu or console2. Native *u*x shell just works better than CygWin or MingW - which is an advantage for the software development we do. Homebrew is great. I kinda like the whole app bundle simplicity over Windows installers.
But there's a lot of suckage as well. The kernel is less stable than Windows, for instance - they still seem to run too large parts of the graphics stack in kernel mode. I could reliable grey-screen kernelpanic the machine by trying to make a FireFox window overlap the laptop screen and an external monitor... something that fanboys obviously won't do, if for the simple reason that windows are clipped to a single monitor... :huh: :huh: :huh:
The minimize/maximize/restore functionality sucks, there's no built-in shortcuts to move windows between monitors (even Windows has had that since, what, Vista in 2007?), it doesn't ship with a image editor (and there's nothing like Paint.NET available for free - either you have to suffer The GiMP, or you pay up), dialogs generally aren't very keyboard friendly, and there's extremely low "discoverability". If something isn't readily available from the dumbed-down menus and dialogs, you'll have to visit Google and drop down to a terminal.
Oh, and it creates these annoying .DS_Store files other dot-files all over the bloody place, which you can't turn off without resorting to OS-destabilizing hackery - just how arrogant is that? Especially considering that OSX only lets you mount NTFS volumes as read-only, but still infects the volumes with those dotfiles.
Un- and replugging external monitors is also quirky. For instance, it seems like the window manager doesn't flag windows as "maximized", just maximizes them... which has funny results when combined with the DPI scaling stuff ("retina", blargh, stop with the stupid marketing BS!). So I spent a couple of minutes moving & resizing windows around the laptop screen and two external monitors every morning.
That's off top of my head, from the comfort of my Windows workstation at home :)
-
Oh, and it creates these annoying .DS_Store files other dot-files all over the bloody place, which you can't turn off without resorting to OS-destabilizing hackery - just how arrogant is that? Especially considering that OSX only lets you mount NTFS volumes as read-only, but still infects the volumes with those dotfiles.
Un- and replugging external monitors is also quirky. For instance, it seems like the window manager doesn't flag windows as "maximized", just maximizes them... which has funny results when combined with the DPI scaling stuff ("retina", blargh, stop with the stupid marketing BS!). So I spent a couple of minutes moving & resizing windows around the laptop screen and two external monitors every morning.
-f0dder
These two really suck. And the fact that you can't get a window over a certain size on your main screen unless you go full screen. That dock isn't all it's cracked up to be. And what are those .DS_Store files for anyway?
-
And what are those .DS_Store files for anyway?
-wraith808
They're basically Apple's version of desktop.ini: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.DS_Store
-
That dock isn't all it's cracked up to be.-wraith808
Hence why I have it set to auto-hide :)
Can't really recall when I've used it, I always use the <Apple>+<Space> thingy to launch stuff.
-
Through a long and arduous process I managed to get OSX working in a VM so I could test some stuff with Unity (http://unity3d.com) "on a Mac."
One thing that was really ridiculous to me was something that I can't remember the exact details about anymore, but it was something like... I thought I had copied/installed my game onto the VM, but apparently it had just created a shortcut/link to a temporary folder, and I had to drag and drop the icon onto my hard drive in order to really install it. Or something really weird like that. As I said, I can't remember the specifics, but I have no idea how someone is supposed to know to do that weird thing to get things to work. You just have to intuit it or something.
-
Trial and error and talking to other folks too perhaps :)
-
Through a long and arduous process I managed to get OSX working in a VM so I could test some stuff with Unity (http://unity3d.com) "on a Mac."
One thing that was really ridiculous to me was something that I can't remember the exact details about anymore, but it was something like... I thought I had copied/installed my game onto the VM, but apparently it had just created a shortcut/link to a temporary folder, and I had to drag and drop the icon onto my hard drive in order to really install it. Or something really weird like that. As I said, I can't remember the specifics, but I have no idea how someone is supposed to know to do that weird thing to get things to work. You just have to intuit it or something.
-Deozaan
Yup. That's pretty standard installation. I stopped trying to figure it out, and just did it.