If I were to Get a Mac (lol)

King of Posters
#1

I don’t really want to spend money on a laptop now, but I lately I’ve needed one for work things, and my old already-mid-range-in-2009 clunker doesn’t cut it anymore. Time to replace it (I bet my coworkers will also appreciate me not having a computer that sounds like a jet engine)

I’m thinking of getting a Macbook Pro. Looks like Apple isn’t going to go back to nVidia graphics any time soon, so I’m stuck with their AMD models.

I haven’t really used a Mac, day-to-day since the System 9 days and I’m out of the loop. So, a few questions for the Mac power-users:

  • I’m planning to dual-boot with some variant of Arch Linux. Anyone with experience for this particular setup? Does Apple make it too painful to dual boot? Should I spare me a headache and just go with a virtual machine?
  • Besides the AMD GPU, the system can still use intel integrated graphics, right? If I installed an Arch partition, could I get decently performing acceleration from the intel graphics alone? (dumb question perhaps, but you never know with driver shenanigans. Also, not really looking for any taxing gaming or even video stuff. I’m good with responsive compositing effects)
  • I’ll probably get a model with the touchbar. Can it be used on Linux or will that become dead space?

So, yeah, my questions are all linux dual-boot related, which may seem silly but my initial plan is to dual boot. I’m not discounting Mac OS at all, and I plan to use that a fair bit as well (It would be nice to be able to run Unity, too)

#2

This is still very speculative but nVidia recently released Mac drivers for the GeForce 1080 and that caused a commotion in the scene as to whether or not they might be coming back to the Mac whenever the next Mac Pro gets released.

When running Windows, there is a fallback mode which lets it behave as a standard row of function keys. I don’t know if it boots into that mode in Linux though.

In any case, the consensus from most Mac users these days seems to be that the Touch Bar is a gimmick that is more distracting than it is useful, and most people who would want a pro laptop seem frustrated with the current line of MBPs for reasons beyond just USB-C being a horribly executed pipe dream.

#3

And when would that be?
I’m looking at a timeframe of around a month to get the new laptop, so if those are going to be released next year, I may have to settle for an AMD anyway.

Tell me more. What are the problems with USB-C? Are there no MBPs with older USB ports?

#4

Apple was very cagey about it in their damage control press event last winter when everyone was thinking Macs were dead, but all we know is “not this year”.

The USB-C spec is a spec for a connector only. Nothing in the spec enforces a communication mode, so as of April, there were 11 different ways to negotiate a connection over a USB-C connector, and 13 different ways of making a USB-C cable. It is completely invisible to the user which modes are used and supported by which devices or cables, so you can have wildly differing results from person to person based on the type of cable they have and the computer or hub they are connecting it to. This is partly what caused the confusion over whether or not the Switch was chargeable via mobile batteries earlier in the year; you had to get the magic combination of port and cable right or else it didn’t work.

A USB-C port does not necessarily support alternate modes (which is what enables DisplayPort and HDMI to be piggybacked over USB), USB Power Delivery (which is what enables fast charging), or Thunderbolt 3.

Apple moving to USB-C as the primary connector on their computers has only amplified people’s awareness of these issues, because now people actually have to rely on this thing instead of only using it with a wall charger for their fancy Android phone.

I think they’re still selling the old generation of MacBook Pros (which is what I’m typing on right now) but those are almost three years old now, so you probably don’t want those?

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#5

Do you mean this Unity https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/unity-editor/ ?

#6

Yes. Is that out of experimental status already?

#7

I mean its still distributed via a shell script they post in their forum iirc, but it works fine.

#8

honestly it’s very unlikely you’ll still want to boot arch if you get a mac, that’s a significant part of the reason to do it.

the touch bar really isn’t getting anywhere near the app support that OSX did in its 2008-ish heyday of desktop app development before iOS and mostly bums me out, but right now it’s tied to their higher end models. the lower end models are beaten in CPU benchmarks by the iPhone 8. Intel’s 10nm CPUs should make a significant difference to the MBP lineup but they may not get refreshed into there until late next year.

#9

if you need a replacement for an older machine I’d eBay a broadwell-ish xps13 or mba for ~$600 until you buy into the current MBP/USB-C ecosystem 18 months from now

generally one of the deciding factors in when to get a mac is “are the low end models good right now?” because the high end models have ridiculous margins on ram and disk and mediocre AMD GPUs and so on. the low end models were good in 2006-7 and 2013-4 and probably again soon but not quite yet.

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#10

and yeah, USB-C is a massive nuisance and little else in practical terms. don’t even try to get a new MBP without dropping another $60 at monoprice.

#11

yeah osx is arguably the reason to get a mac, a huge part of why people have evangelised the things for the last decade

i haven’t done the dual boot thing in a while but if you’re comfortable with arch already it’s nothing you can’t handle, though they tend to run very hot and loud + lose a significant chunk of battery life under linux

#12

Um, yeah, that’s the point. If I just wanted to run Linux I’d get a cheaper, moderately powerful PC.

I’m mainly asking to see if the possibility is viable. This laptop would be mainly for work and I’d still use my desktop for most day-to-day stuff. I’m pretty sure I’d be able to do all of my work stuff from Mac OS, really, even if I’d miss having a super-customized tiling wm…

However, all this USB-C nonsense, and the rumors of the next gen MBPs having nVidia GPUs, but not this year are seriously making me consider just getting a PC now and postponing the Mac ownership for later.

#13

i mean there are definitely other more slept-on reasons to get a mac but yeah that might be smart

(and hey, i have a friend who solely runs arch on her mbp)

#14

I said Mac Pro, not MacBook Pro, but it’s not hard to extrapolate that to be “nVidia may be returning to Macs [in general], or at least the ones that aren’t fully reliant on integrated graphics”

#15

My work laptop is a 13" USB-C MBP, and I also have a Dell XPS 13 for gaming which is USB-C chargeable and a USB-C phone. The cross-chargeability among those varied devices (as well as Switch) is pretty sweet. That said a lot of things about USB-C remain really unsatisfying even despite trying very hard to convert all my devices at once:

  • For fast laptop charging, you need USB PD charger with a C-to-C cable. (And the Dell laptop will only charge with that.) For fast phone charging, you need a Qualcomm Quick Charge charger with an A-to-C cable. (I’ve just ordered some A-male-to-C-female adapters for when I only have a C-to-C cable.)

  • Some categories of secondary device like wireless headphones, battery-powered razors, PS4 controllers and Apple tablets are dragging their feet to get on the USB-C train.

  • For those stragglers, adapters like C-female-to-Micro/lightning-male seem desirable to carry around, but on Amazon the ones that exist have 25% 1-star reviews and the occasional photo of a melted thing on burnt carpet. So I raise an eyebrow and prefer to carry around full cables. And those all have an A port on the other end so a USB PD charger doesn’t work for them…

  • Mechanical fit is much more inconsistent than I ever encountered for MicroUSB. The Apple C-to-C cable is such a struggle to connect or disconnect from my phone I worry a little that I’m damaging the socket.

So I dunno. I spent more time than it’s worth this year trying to achieve a cool single-charger-and-cable-plus-a-couple-of-adapters lifestyle this year before concluding it really can’t be a thing in the current ecosystem of devices. I still need two chargers in my bag and about 4 cables, not much better than before. This irritating transition period will probably persist for years.

#16

i’m sure this is a dumb question but why are apple pushing usb-c now? i thought lightning/thunderbolt were their big boys

#17

It’s a good question especially given that their iDevices show no intention of moving to USB-C. The main reason is that USB-C can carry up to 80 watts of power in addition to data (actually it carries Thunderbolt as well, so they haven’t given up on that, just on the Minidisplayport form factor for Thunderbolt). It can also drive monitors. In that sense it’s the first truly universal port: a single USB-C port is equivalent to a complete laptop docking station.

Also, it’s slightly thinner than USB-A, and knowing Apple that was actually the main reason they switched

#18

oh wow that’s huge. i’m glad they put so much thought into writing consistent standards for it, imagine if you messed up something as game-changing as this!!

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#19

that’s the thing though, it’s a universal port and virtually everyone but apple only implements a subset of it, so they get blamed for pushing an expensive new standard even when it’s less proprietary than the alternative like they did with display outputs for years, and the rest of the ecosystem is a total mess despite using the same shape cables.

it’s an extremely cool port, it carries a ton of power and bandwidth and it can connect an external GPU while charging your laptop, but almost nothing connects to it natively yet and a lot of the universal adapters don’t work.

A lot of pain would’ve been avoided if they still shipped one legacy USB port.

#20

Slightly. Thinner.

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