Buy a 2015 macbook pro, its the last one without any issues, superior keyboard, legacy ports as well. Smaller more compact touchpad as well
The only downside is it is only thunderbolt 2, and they recently went away with external GPU support for new macOS updates.
I paid $1500 for mine in practically brand new mint condition on amazon, buying a new a 2018 version was $2500 roughly for something that also had 512 GB SSD.
I find the macbookpro has way better ergonomic features than windows laptops. Also, programming environment is just so much nicer IMO on mac.
Yeah my laptop of choice is 15" MB Pro mid-2015. Picked up 2 of them over the last couple of years from Apple's refurbished store and I think with OS X it really is still one of the best laptops out there. A little tip - you can use https://refurb-tracker.com/ to get alerts when they get in stock.
TBH it's the MB Pro + OS X combo that works so well. MB Pro + Windows is definitely sub-par... lot of other great laptops for that. I've never tried Linux on a MB Pro.
Ubuntu runs great on my 2013 15" Macbook Pro. It does mess with the boot manager, and can become unstable if you install it simultaneously with boot camp.
The only issue is that the trackpad drivers aren't so good. Stick to OS X if you're a trackpad gesture power user.
Thanks for the tip! I reluctantly bought a 2018 MBP but returned it within a week. I thought I would have to stick with my workhorse 2012 MBP, but now I'll check out refurbished 2015s.
> Also, programming environment is just so much nicer IMO on mac.
Really? I had a Mac for a few years, but I found that I didn't like the environment as much as either Windows or Linux. A lot of programming environments work best on a Linux-like environment and don't do so well on something BSD-like (such as MacOS). There's a lot of open source software that only works on Windows and Linux, too... MacOS has such a small market share that many open source developers just ignore it.
It must depend on niche. For web development sort of things or python sort of scripting, it is Windows that is regularly ignored the most by a wide margin.
I work on Mac OS X and my experience is quite good. Homebrew + IntelliJ and I can get my Java development going guite easily (plus redis, mongodb, tomcat, zookeepper...
I guess it dependsd what you are doing. I don't do C#, .net development /.net framework(WPF), game development, SQL-server, or things that are better on a native windows platform. So I don't really reap the benefits using a windows PC.
Native folder navigation and terminal is much nicer on macOS. MacOS has better 3rd party programs for productivity in programming IMO. Iterm2 allows you to have multiple custom terminals all on one screen, and can be a transparent overlay so you don't have to swap between apps as often. The best 3rd party terminal I have found was cmder on windows, but it would always give me path developmental issues that had no explicable causes why something failed. Something that failed in MS-DOS, would work in gitbash, but fail in cmder. The solution was to just uninstall and reinstall everything many times, or just do a restore point.
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Docking experience on macOS has a nice native feel to it, I prefer its transitions as well. In windows, I would run a combination of taskbar tweaks include resizing all app icons, adding blank exe spacer shortcuts, and run autohotkey scripts in the background. Windows definitely still has way more customization methods using 3rd party apps than does mac.
Macbook pros have a superior experience when it comes to handling things on a single screen. Its just convenient to use native gestures on the trackpad and move across your terminal VS browser VS website. I prefer a double monitor experience on macbook pros as well. Its just so much easier treating that monitor as a seperate "desktop space" rather than one jointed area like in windows. I've owned 2 windows laptops before this. Also, the hardware on a 2015 macbook pro is definitely much nicer (better form factor for its value) than any windows laptop I've used before.
MacOS handles dependency issues much better than windows. Every app just lives in its own tiny little folder, also downloading and installing things is just so much easier. Using unarchiver on macOS is just a one click install for most things. With windows I ran revo uninstaller, but in MacOS there is an equivalent called AppCleaner.
In macOS, when I install things I use homebrew (e.g. nodeJS). With windows its always been a full uninstall using a fully packaged exe or msi file type.
MacOS does have some programs that really suck compared to windows. My favorite apps in windows are shareX / greenshot, macOS has no close equivalents to it. I use this to make gif documentation logs during webdevelopment all the time, its very handy. I haven't really given Wine (running windows apps on mac) a try though. MacOS doesn't have an app like "timesnapper" which I use in webdevelopment in sysadmin work, which helps me play back my entire day to see what I did. Helps in catching which settings caused which errors during development, and also its good for post documentation reasons as well. MacOS had no equivalent unless you intend on running OBS software all day long or used special custom applescripts
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When I develop on a windows machine it seems like there is just so many more potential bugs I have to face. When I go look up a solution, its more scattered because people have windows 8 laptops. Or 8.1, which is just a whole set of other problems. Or they are still using windows 7, some are using the latest windows 10, etc. Sometimes I'll try every possible solution to that issue, none of them work, I'll try it 10 different ways, no go. I end up just giving up honestly, its not fun when you are fighting unforseen issues and can't get into what actually matters.
With macOS its a little more uniform, since things aren't scattered windows7,8,8.1,10 issues. Everyone has the same problem, so chances are higher there's going to be some solutions out there that would actually work. Since the experience is also more consistent across both the hardware+software, there is also less unknowns.
With windows I would run into potential hardware issues and software problems as well. My old windows 8.1 laptop could not upgrade to windows 10 due to intel L2 caching error upgrades, drivers would fail, etc.
I haven't really tried a pure native desktop Mac experience though, but I still definitely prefer windows for this. Probably because I'm so used to windows.
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I like having both a windows desktop and macbookpro laptop experience so I can get the best of both worlds
I used a personal linux laptop for 2 years, mostly when my windows laptop went to shit from poor performance issues. Linux just has such a huge lack of apps that I rely on everyday in either macOS or windows.
Also, macOS just has better native multimedia experience and graphic design programs well, so there's that. Nothing really compares to Apple Sketch on windows. iMovie is far superior to windows movie, etc. MacOS just has more batteries included programs that don't suck than windows
I find that in some instances, windows development is treated as an afterthought. In some cases, its macOS. Just depends on what it is IMO. With MacOS, its more tailored toward designers and graphic artists, so webdevelopment (which is what I do) is just a better overall experience
Have you considered virtualization? I tend to use MacOS merely as a hypervisor, where I can step into as many different OS environments as I wish. You mentioned how you like to use Windows; what about using it in a virtual machine?
I don't like using virtual machines, it just adds too much friction to me for getting things done. At least that was my experience on windows OS. I've tried a combination of docker, dockerhub, vagrant, and virtualbox. I'd rather just have a seamless development experience right at startup, macOS is really good at that.
I tend to shy away from tools whenever I can, because everything has a maintenance & learning cost associated with it. Also, because I tend to have a lot of things open at the same time, virtualization really slows me down whenever I have to jump into the virtualized OS's keyboard / mouse / etc.
Down the road I might start using docker images + docker hub if I feel that the benefits (isolating test environments, debugging issues cross platform, deploying) of using virtualization outweighs its cons (maintenance, setting up, memorizing new commands, constantly running commands, etc). As of now I don't have much of a use case for it though.
I'm still holding on to my mid 2012 rMBP despite its battery almost nearing its end of life. Was hoping to upgrade this most recent refresh, but the lack of a non-Touchbar option just turned me off.
Thinking of just getting my battery replaced instead, but I'll consider looking at the 2015s
Well that's not the only downside. You're also nearly $2000 for a laptop with a CPU that is significantly slower than what you'll get in either a new MBP or most Windows alternatives.
> Buy a 2015 macbook pro, its the last one without any issues, superior keyboard, legacy ports as well. Smaller more compact touchpad as well
While I agree, I wouldn't call HDMI, USB and SD Card legacy ports. They are actively being developed and enhanced at the moment. The only thing is that they weren't invented by Apple.
The only downside is it is only thunderbolt 2, and they recently went away with external GPU support for new macOS updates.
I paid $1500 for mine in practically brand new mint condition on amazon, buying a new a 2018 version was $2500 roughly for something that also had 512 GB SSD.
I find the macbookpro has way better ergonomic features than windows laptops. Also, programming environment is just so much nicer IMO on mac.