MacBook

Wed Aug 24 21:14:48 MST 2016

I retired from my *nix work early 2013 and have left technical projects for people activities. I have used a Macbook Pro since then, and love it for portability and ruggedness - yay SSD!, I've fumbled it a few times when running, once on concrete, keeps on ticking. I have not been a developer in that environment, yet have noted several little breaks in compatibility that could trip you up. I'm sure there are web sites discussing that.

I still visit my mint/mate desktop periodically as my "real home." I also use a Mac Mini at church running music apps, and that was a great and affordable choice.

We have bought the extended warranty and I enjoyed several consultations at the Genius Bar, for other Macs in the family; now those are mostly replaced by Windows boxes, largely second hand. (I use Computers&? -- "Computers And Questions" -- on Tatum south of Bell, true geeks who give solid service on not-new boxes for not-rich clients.)

Remember that Mac is a culture, designed for people with a twitter attention span. Apple cares not at all about making this work with other brands. Like M$ and Google, they want to own you. They nag you to take new OS updates, adding features for better one-ness with all your other Apple toys (I have none) and possibly breaking geek-critical functions. And remember how Motorola users were abandoned when they switched to Intel.

So while a Macbook *is* great in a lot of ways, doing nice glossy things and looking a lot like home when you're on the command line, you might want to keep a Linux system warmed up to host some basic functions that Apple can't make money on and therefore won't mind screwing up.

Good luck.

<div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: Eric Oyen <eric.oyen at icloud.com> </div><div>Date:2016/08/24  20:22  (GMT-07:00) </div><div>To: Main PLUG discussion list <plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org> </div><div>Subject: Re: MacBook </div><div>
</div>who was screaming that the post was irrelevant? I certainly wasn't. :)

At the end of the day, Linux still needs a lot of work to be considered to be a viable desktop production environment.

can you get quicken for linux? what about Peachtree? How about a full office suite that can do the same things that MS office can do? what about some of the other mainstream office and production apps? are there many equivalents or direct replacements? THis is the primary problem I have seen with linux over the years. great OS support, but lousy where it counts.

-eric

On Aug 24, 2016, at 5:24 PM, James Dugger wrote:

Short answer: Regarding Business productivity - My advice go with the Macbook Pro.  Also I believe you can get a 13-inch with 16GB and a 500GB SSD for less than $2k.

I switched from Microsoft to Linux on all servers and desktops in my former business only to switch the desktops to Apple products from Linux.  Linux just doesn't have parody in new application implementations on the desktop where it mattered.  And I  haven't met a business owner yet who was willing to hang out in Linux until someone got around to making it work.

Regarding the cost - My experience is the any of the professional line laptops in any brand end up with a unit cost of use less than their cheaper counterparts.  The MacBook Pro is no different and is comparably priced to any of these lines when you spec the stuff inside.

MacBook Pro is the developers choice because at any price it is the only product on which you can easily build a development environment for any of the other environments.  If your going to spend $2k on a laptop it better work in all of the possible environments in which may need to develop. 

A question was asked regarding the relevance of posting this to a Linux list.  How about this - I love Linux and develop products that are used in the tens of thousands of Linux instances in my company everyday... but I could write a book about how frustrating it is that I don't have the option to have Linux as a viable OS option on the desktop in a business use case, ironically in a company that is central to the use of Linux in an industry.

On Wed, Aug 24, 2016 at 12:31 PM, Eric Oyen <eric.oyen at icloud.com> wrote:
yes, as my old 2007 whitebook can attest. unfortunately, the software and some of the apps are no longer supported and getting anything newer on here just isn't going to happen. where does this leave me? well, stuck on old hardware that is becoming less and less useful as apps and web design make it harder to cope. At some point, I just might decide to put paid to OS X lion and do a full linux install on here.

SOme of the features of OS X that I will miss:
keychains (this password vault has been a lifesaver)
apps that "just work" without having to tweak or prod.
easy to use interface for the blind (voiceover)
and just about anything else not covered by the above.

SOme things I am looking forward to as I transition to Linux on this device:
upgraded applications capable of new and interesting things
support for apps that use GTK, perl, ruby, and other scripts/programming languages that can be easily adapted for the blind (hell, all the libraries to do this are built in).
enhanced performance (linux still has the lowest overhead of any OS I know of other than OpenBSD).
Security (windows still can't touch this!).
access to utilities and applications not readily available on other platforms.
OPEN SORCE
mostly free (or low cost through donation) - I am willing to pay if my budget supports it.

now, I have been a long time user of Linux (really since almost its beginnings) and also a longtime member of PLUG (one of the original steering committee members here!).

Still, there is something to be said for an OS/machine that "just works". I just wish apple would hop on the Linux bandwagon and offer an alternative OS for those times when OS X seems too bloated.

-Eric (founder of the Technomage Guild)

On Aug 24, 2016, at 9:25 AM, Alan Dayley wrote:

My younger son is still using my five year old 15" MacBook Pro. It has no problems. I replaced the hard drive with a Samsung SSD about four years ago only because I wanted the improved performance. The whole system as zero problems.

My older son is now using my four year old 13" MacBook Air. It has had zero problems except that the battery doesn't hold a charge for more than 2 hours any more. Normal battery wear. That notebook spent four years traveling all over with me, almost every week in my bag going and coming from somewhere. The only physical issue is a few of the keyboard key tops are scratched down from my fingernails.

I have run Ubuntu and Mint on both of the systems without issue. Though I confess to spending most of my time in OS X.

I now have a four month old 13" MacBook Air. Has double the RAM of my previous unit. It helps. Buy as much RAM as you can.

Apple hardware, in my experience, is both beautiful and durable.

Alan

On Wed, Aug 24, 2016 at 12:05 PM, Anon Anon <lokotejones at gmail.com> wrote:
I have a MacBook pro I use at work. It's a Mac. It'll work. It's a bastardized bsd box.

I haven't turned mine off in months. If you need a Mac, buy it.

Why not try running mac os in a virtual box machine to try it out before hand?

On Aug 24, 2016 08:54, "Keith Smith" <techlists at phpcoderusa.com> wrote:

Hi,

I'm strongly considering buying a Macbook pro.

I'm a LAMP (PHP) developer. Currently I use Mint on a Dell. Both laptop and desktop. I do have a Dell laptop that runs M$ 10. Was a bad move upgrading from M$7 to M$10... another story for another day.

The reason for my desired move is I want something that just works. I do not have the time nor do I have the expertise to maintain Linux Mint when there is an issue. For instance Dropbox does not launch correctly. I have a work around, but do not want to have to figure this stuff out. JoinMe.com does no work completely on my Linux desktop and I need it so I use my Windows laptop. I can watch but I cannot become the presenter.

Moving to Mac is purely a business decision.

Up to this point I have bought cheap on sale Dell.

I also need Virtualbox because I need to develop using PHP 5.6 and PHP 7.

In doing my research I have narrowed my search to the Macbook Pro 13.3 or 15.4 inch models. I'm leaning towards the 15.4 since it has 16GB of RAM. I suspect with the SSD drives these Macs have to sing.

My shock is the $2000 price tag. Yikes. I'm used to cheap dell hardware that I pay $300 to $400 for on sale. I can see Best Buy is selling the MacBook at a slightly discounted price.

If I can be just a little more productive the Mac will pay for itself in no time.

The other thing I like about the Pro is it allows for driving two external monitors. At the resolution the Pro provides that should be a lot of real estate give the laptop monitor makes 3. The only downside I am aware of is with the external monitors the refresh rate drops to 30Hz. I think someone on this list brought that up and they did not like that low of a refresh rate.

I think I would find iMovie and Pages useful. And I could add an iPhone to the mix and utilize those benefits.

If I buy the Mackbook pro 15.4 inch with 16GB of RAM what would be a reasonable life expectancy in a production environment? What would I be able to reasonably expect working it 12+ hours a day, day in day?

Any and every thought is much appreciated.

--
Keith Smith
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