<story><title>Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?</title><text>The MBP is by far the best laptop I’ve used. The graphics are amazing, and the touchpad is ergonomic. However, Apple has demonstrated their inability to be reliable. I bought my MBP in January of this year (2019) and tomorrow I’ll pick it up from its 3rd repair. I’ve grown tired of this repair routine. And after the 3 years runs out, they will start charging me.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>robert_foss</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s no real package manager. You can&amp;#x27;t rebuild your kernel. You can&amp;#x27;t upgrade your hardware. Once your HW is unsupported by Apple you&amp;#x27;re stuck with an old OS that is unsupported by third party software as well.</text></item><item><author>cytzol</author><text>&amp;gt; In a hotel (=on Mac), everything is stylish and cared for, but you have very little freedom to change things.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve heard this over and over — that Macs are locked-down, uncustomisable machines — and I don&amp;#x27;t agree with it at all.&lt;p&gt;I use replacements for almost all the built-in apps. I use a custom launcher. My editor config Git repo is approaching ten years old, and my shell config Git repo is almost eight. There are standard interfaces to per-application Preferences and keyboard shortcuts. When I sit down to use someone else&amp;#x27;s Mac, I have no idea how to use it!&lt;p&gt;What changes am I missing? The only thing I can think of is that I can&amp;#x27;t use a different window manager or a different kernel, but I&amp;#x27;m fine with those already.</text></item><item><author>mherrmann</author><text>I switched from MBP to a Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu. I compare the experience to living in a hotel vs. living at home [1]. In a hotel (=on Mac), everything is stylish and cared for, but you have very little freedom to change things. At home (=on Linux), you need to do the dishes yourself but there&amp;#x27;s no external agenda. It&amp;#x27;s simply yours.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m very happy with the switch. Though I&amp;#x27;m on (Debian+) Xfce now instead of Ubuntu and would go for a ThinkPad instead of the XPS, because 1) I want a 14&amp;quot; screen 2) the XPS&amp;#x27;s fan is too loud, especially when Skyping 3) the XPS&amp;#x27;s camera is placed at the bottom of the screen instead of at the top, so people you have video calls with look up your nostrils.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;fman.io&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;home-and-hotel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;fman.io&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;home-and-hotel&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>journalctl</author><text>I don’t... I don’t want to rebuild my kernel? I want my goddamn computer to compute. I want to get my work done, then maybe order Chipotle. At least the Mac sleeps properly when I close the lid, unlike every Linux laptop I’ve ever had.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?</title><text>The MBP is by far the best laptop I’ve used. The graphics are amazing, and the touchpad is ergonomic. However, Apple has demonstrated their inability to be reliable. I bought my MBP in January of this year (2019) and tomorrow I’ll pick it up from its 3rd repair. I’ve grown tired of this repair routine. And after the 3 years runs out, they will start charging me.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>robert_foss</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s no real package manager. You can&amp;#x27;t rebuild your kernel. You can&amp;#x27;t upgrade your hardware. Once your HW is unsupported by Apple you&amp;#x27;re stuck with an old OS that is unsupported by third party software as well.</text></item><item><author>cytzol</author><text>&amp;gt; In a hotel (=on Mac), everything is stylish and cared for, but you have very little freedom to change things.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve heard this over and over — that Macs are locked-down, uncustomisable machines — and I don&amp;#x27;t agree with it at all.&lt;p&gt;I use replacements for almost all the built-in apps. I use a custom launcher. My editor config Git repo is approaching ten years old, and my shell config Git repo is almost eight. There are standard interfaces to per-application Preferences and keyboard shortcuts. When I sit down to use someone else&amp;#x27;s Mac, I have no idea how to use it!&lt;p&gt;What changes am I missing? The only thing I can think of is that I can&amp;#x27;t use a different window manager or a different kernel, but I&amp;#x27;m fine with those already.</text></item><item><author>mherrmann</author><text>I switched from MBP to a Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu. I compare the experience to living in a hotel vs. living at home [1]. In a hotel (=on Mac), everything is stylish and cared for, but you have very little freedom to change things. At home (=on Linux), you need to do the dishes yourself but there&amp;#x27;s no external agenda. It&amp;#x27;s simply yours.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m very happy with the switch. Though I&amp;#x27;m on (Debian+) Xfce now instead of Ubuntu and would go for a ThinkPad instead of the XPS, because 1) I want a 14&amp;quot; screen 2) the XPS&amp;#x27;s fan is too loud, especially when Skyping 3) the XPS&amp;#x27;s camera is placed at the bottom of the screen instead of at the top, so people you have video calls with look up your nostrils.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;fman.io&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;home-and-hotel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;fman.io&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;home-and-hotel&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>new_realist</author><text>“You can’t rebuild your kernel.”  Are you kidding me?  Apple supports the hardware it ships on day one, then provides free updates until the device is obsolete.&lt;p&gt;If you must rebuild Apple’s OSS kernel, you can follow the instructions here: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;developer.apple.com&amp;#x2F;library&amp;#x2F;archive&amp;#x2F;documentation&amp;#x2F;Darwin&amp;#x2F;Conceptual&amp;#x2F;KernelProgramming&amp;#x2F;build&amp;#x2F;build.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;developer.apple.com&amp;#x2F;library&amp;#x2F;archive&amp;#x2F;documentation&amp;#x2F;Da...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>