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Lenovo, LG and HP Introduce MacBook Lookalikes at CES 2016
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I'd have bought Air for few years now, but i refuse to buy it before Apple updates the screen to this decade.
Same thing with Airport Express.
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How about thin, light and 4k 17"er?
At 17", the weight will likely push beyond what I want to have to carry. If they could keep it under 4 lbs, then sure, the bigger the better. I've also got (not currently using) a 13" 2011 MacBook Air - loved using it, after having carried my 2007 15" MBP for 4 years of traveling all over the country. The screen resolution wasn't really the deal breaker for me (not enough storage even though I swapped in a 256gb ssd), but of course once I got the 2013 15" rMBP, there was no going back.
Because Linux Torvalds himself has said that the ONLY reason that Linux has not had widespread desktop adoption is that it's not preloaded onto computers like Windows or OS X (not because it just plain SUCKS as a desktop OS and has no commercial software where it counts).
I've seen ENDLESS Linux parades on news sites about Windows (yes, Windows 10 is spyware and sucks so come use Linux Mint which is the most awesome thing ever made, blah blah blah). The problem is that it's only easy to use if the software you want to use is available on their "repository" and that repository is kept up to date. I remember like 5 new versions of Firefox coming out for Windows/OS X before a single update appeared on a repository before (because the distributions disable the auto-updates an official build has, but you had to install Firefox yourself directly to get the one that didn't and it would often put it in a "weird" place on your computer because distributions often put applications in different places "Just because" when it comes to Linux. Updates for things like Firefox are often for SECURITY reasons and the repository maintainers are typically working for free so it just doesn't get done in a hurry. Great, eh? You want the latest and greatest immediately on Linux? I had to build from source before to get it. That's fun for noobs worldwide! Fun for the whole family!
And what happens when you get to a MAJOR software update for a given distribution? Is it like OS X where you just click update and "it just works" (well most of the time)? NO NO NO NO NO NO!!! MOST distributions have NO OPTION to do major updates PERIOD and in my experience the ones that do are often unstable afterwards so like with Windows of old, your best option for a major update was to reinstall from scratch or what is called a "clean install" (which in the Linux world can be like every 6 months, especially in the old days where an actual feature you almost NEEDED came out like say USB support for something (that had support for 6 years prior in Windows and 8 years prior in OS X) would only appear in the newest most unstable distributions since it just came out and yet without it your computer was not able to use a web cam or a scanner or whatever and so if you were going to build a Linux machine you could only pick from these 5 parts out of 200,000 parts or it just wouldn't work at all since there were no drivers and the drivers for those 5 were funky because they were reverse-engineered for 3 of them and 2-bit hack jobs on the other two.
The point is that to do a "major" update you have wipe/reinstall Linux to do it with most distributions. This is why they recommend separating your "home" directory on a separate partition from the rest of the distribution so your personal files don't get wiped every update. The problem is that only means media, documents, etc. All you "applications" have to be reinstalled from scratch every major update (unheard of in Windows or OS X for just an "update" although a clean install "update" of Windows requires the same thing) and a MAJOR PAIN THE BUTT (hope you like spending your time maintaining your OS rather than just using it!) And that is the gist of it! Linux is either for extreme computer noobs who NEVER update or have their nerdy son do it for them but used to get tons of viruses online with Windows (e.g. old people that don't know anything about computers) or it's for extreme nerds who have more fun playing with the OS itself than any actual usable software (let alone have a life outside their computer). It's NOT for people in-between that want to stay reasonably up-to-date but don't want a HASSLE every 8 months (e.g. I went two years without updating OS X because Yosemite was reported to suck, but when I did update to El Capitain, I easily backed everything up on a bootable external drive with Carbon Copy Cloner first and then updated automatically and everything went fine and I had ONE program not work and it was an expensive one, but 10.11.1 fixed it. I could have easily switched back if I needed to with CCC and I didn't have to install or re-install ONE SINGLE FRACKING PROGRAM since Leopard across two machines (i.e. This Mac Mini imported most of my configuration and programs from my PPC Power Mac (that by that time had mostly Universal binaries and so it worked just fine moving from one CPU system to another) and that's a whole different fracking architecture! No Linux machine on earth could do such a thing and work without recompiling or installing new software from some repository! Linux is user friendly? Bullcrap.
Yet entire droves of Linux people deride OS X as for simpletons or something? Simpletons? I CAN do those other things and I know the Unix/Linux command line. I don't WANT to spend my time doing those things anymore. I'm out of my OS "fan" stage and just want to get things done and relax and play a game (yeah, lots of games in the past for Linux although that's slowly changing solely due to Valve).
The ENTIRE LINUX KERNEL is a "hack job". Just look at its source code some time and compare that to Open Solaris' source code. One of the people that worked on the Linux kernel has been quoted as saying basically that Open Solaris was like a fracking (well he said the other word) Star Destroyer compared to Linux which was more like the Falcon (fast but held together with duct tape and could explode any minute). These are public quotes stored on Wikipedia for posterity even. Go read them if you don't believe me.
Linux has its place and uses, though. For example, I just installed OpenELEC on a USB stick after taking apart a 1st Gen Apple TV and removing its (fried) WiFi card and installing a Broadcom HD Video decoder card. An ATV from 2007 can now play 1080p HD video and have 60-80% of its mere single core 1GHz CPU free while doing so and with only 256MB of ram! But we're talking about updates that update the entire OS and Kodi at the same time and that's the only things that run on it! Your only job is to backup your config/database files for Kodi before you upgrade. In other words, a major update where you only run one program is no big deal. But I do not find it pleasant as a desktop OS and I've tried it over a dozen times since 1998 (last time in 2013 not counting the latest OpenElec which just came out two months ago and is now on my 1st Gen ATV running 15.2 Isengard Kodi).
Previous versions of the HP Elitebook Folio were configurable with SUSE Enterprise Linux (and FreeDOS), I don't see why it wouldn't be available for this new model too.
I remember hearing about someone that bought a netbook and then could not do anything because they did not see it was installed with Linux. Sure there are work arounds for a few things. It seems people even need a work around for something major like netflix. I have tried it over a dozen times and it could never come close. Even when my needs dropped quite a bit there was always something it could not do. It also does not matter whos fault it is. If an OS does not do what I need it to do then it is useless.
Linux is not ready for a prime time and won't be ready for a very long time.
I got a Chromebook with Chrome OS and within 20 minutes realised I won't be able to stand using it. So I put Linux on it, a special C720 distro. Then I updated it, as recommended, using sudo apt-get update (this alone means Linux is not ready for a casual user). Then I spent a good part of two days trying to work out how to set up PgUp/PgDn etc. to Search + arrows. Then it worked. But Polish characters, like ą, ć, etc., stopped working. I spent a good part of two days again trying to make both work at the same time. When I got the Linux to work perfectly and look great, the laptop fell off the table.
I had it repaired for free (lucky me), and installed the very same distro. IT BEHAVED DIFFERENTLY. This time it was very easy to set up PgDn/PgUp and Polish characters together, not because I remembered how to do it, but because suddenly they didn't clash. BUT within two weeks my keyboard and mouse started lagging. For instance typing "keyboard" would result in two seconds of nothing appearing, and then the word "kyebroad".
I installed Ubuntu optimised for C720. Got it to work. Couldn't get the menu bar to be transparent despite installing an app to make the menu bar transparent and setting it to transparent. OK. I updated it to 15.04 without problems doing sudo apt-get upgrade. Didn't lose any apps or data. The PgDn/PgUp vs Polish characters problem returned immediately though. Again, two days of adding the shortcuts to commands into 10 various files which may or may not be run at startup in this or other order. Yay! It works! But suddenly I couldn't right-click with the bottom right corner of the trackpad. Luckily it was enough to add a new file called, IIRC, 51.keyboard.conf into some random folder, and copy-paste a command into it. The Linux forums are very helpful like that.
The Chromebook is really fast, really handy, nice size and quality for the price. Unfortunately I spend 2/3 of the time trying to make Linux actually work. At the end I finally bought an Air. The screen is actually a bit worse than C720's $199 screen (!!!) but EVERYTHING WORKS. Even with El Capitan. Mail? Works. Polish characters? Work. PgUp/Dn? Work. Keyboard? No lag. Trackpad? Works. Did I have to edit any system files? No. Does Photoshop work? Yes.
I'm sorry. Linux is not ready. Unless you provide Applecare type of support which will remotely fix all problems on the computer for the users. I can't possibly imagine my non-techie friends googling frantically for solutions and creating a file called 51.keyboard.conf using sudo gedit. Chrome OS is more ready for prime time than Linux.
I got a Chromebook with Chrome OS and within 20 minutes realised I won't be able to stand using it. So I put Linux on it, a special C720 distro. Then I updated it, as recommended, using sudo apt-get update (this alone means Linux is not ready for a casual user). Then I spent a good part of two days trying to work out how to set up PgUp/PgDn etc. to Search + arrows. Then it worked. But Polish characters, like ą, ć, etc., stopped working. I spent a good part of two days again trying to make both work at the same time. When I got the Linux to work perfectly and look great, the laptop fell off the table.
I had it repaired for free (lucky me), and installed the very same distro. IT BEHAVED DIFFERENTLY. This time it was very easy to set up PgDn/PgUp and Polish characters together, not because I remembered how to do it, but because suddenly they didn't clash. BUT within two weeks my keyboard and mouse started lagging. For instance typing "keyboard" would result in two seconds of nothing appearing, and then the word "kyebroad".
I installed Ubuntu optimised for C720. Got it to work. Couldn't get the menu bar to be transparent despite installing an app to make the menu bar transparent and setting it to transparent. OK. I updated it to 15.04 without problems doing sudo apt-get upgrade. Didn't lose any apps or data. The PgDn/PgUp vs Polish characters problem returned immediately though. Again, two days of adding the shortcuts to commands into 10 various files which may or may not be run at startup in this or other order. Yay! It works! But suddenly I couldn't right-click with the bottom right corner of the trackpad. Luckily it was enough to add a new file called, IIRC, 51.keyboard.conf into some random folder, and copy-paste a command into it. The Linux forums are very helpful like that.
The Chromebook is really fast, really handy, nice size and quality for the price. Unfortunately I spend 2/3 of the time trying to make Linux actually work. At the end I finally bought an Air. The screen is actually a bit worse than C720's $199 screen (!!!) but EVERYTHING WORKS. Even with El Capitan. Mail? Works. Polish characters? Work. PgUp/Dn? Work. Keyboard? No lag. Trackpad? Works. Did I have to edit any system files? No. Does Photoshop work? Yes.
I'm sorry. Linux is not ready. Unless you provide Applecare type of support which will remotely fix all problems on the computer for the users. I can't possibly imagine my non-techie friends googling frantically for solutions and creating a file called 51.keyboard.conf using sudo gedit. Chrome OS is more ready for prime time than Linux.
The Linux Community wants you to believe it's ready and go to GREAT lengths posting everywhere how awesome Linux is and especially Linux Mint, but it's BS. I've used Linux on and off since 1998 or so and if you enjoy "tinkering" with the operating system itself, it's great fun. You learn the Unix/Linux shell and some scripting and you can customize the living hell out of it to look like all kinds of things, etc. My favorite setup was with Black Box and a Matrix theme.
I compiled little Matrix code dropping dock apps and setup of a little docked app selector and it was all green and awesome looking, but the damn interface sucked to maintain (you really had to add every new app by hand in a freaking shell script to make it look right). I even wondered at one point what it would be like to have a modern computer running on the Internet with NO GUI, so I set up an alternate funky shell setup with multiple text-based tabs/screens and had the Lynx browser and some Pine-based email setup and I forget what the news reader was called I used (it's been like 12 years) and I had XChat and basically this whole freaking shell based "play" environment and congratulated myself on being one damn cool freaking Linux freak. The problem was that it wasn't that much fun surfing the web with a freaking text browser, but at at least back then it was doable for a lot of sites. Today, well....not so much.
Really, in the end, the problem is that it's a freaking hassle. Whether you want to do a major update and have to bork your entire application setup and reinstall it all afterwards (basically a clean install except your home directory and if you didn't create a separate partition for that when you first installed, it get borked too). A lot of programs don't have binaries compatible (in the where's it go sense among other things) with your particular distribution. You'll install and it and wonder, where the frack did it go to? Get out your shell again! Start checking /usr/local/bin instead of /usr/bin or vice-versa and don't expect it to add itself to your KDE menus if it's Gnome-based or vice-versa and don't expect it to appear in the right menu if your menu is customized (they all are from the old Mandrake/Mandriva to OpenSuse, etc.). it's just ALL OVER THE PLACE and that's why these guys will tell you to just get your applications from your distributions REPO (repository). The problem is that you are then dependent on SOMEONE ELSE setting up software packages that you might want to consider using. Anything outside that range...tough crap. You might even have to compile it yourself.
Sick of waiting for that "someone" to update Firefox to the newest version, too damn bad. Keep waiting or go find a way to install the official version yourself and expect it to appear where you don't want/expect it again (kind of nice that Mac applications almost always appear in the "Applications" directory and you can move them wherever you want easily as well without issue). I've seen things like Firefox 5 or 6 versions behind and that's when it's still maintained; when a MAJOR distribution upgrade occurs, sooner or later no one will BOTHER to update the older distributions repositories to newer Firefox or other software versions. They expect you to upgrade and yet they tell you if you don't want the major hassle of upgrading "major" updates and having to reinstall all your applications, then just pick a distribution that is slow to update or stick with an older version. They may have security updates for the older versions, but using some browser that is 20 versions behind and full of security holes isn't so great!
Want to compile yourself? If a developer library isn't where the package expects it to be (again, there's a lot of distributions that vary between usr and usr/local for starters), then you have to edit the makefiles and play other games. That might be part for the course for developers, but end users? Hey, don't be a noob! Spend your days memorizing odd/obscure acronyms because UNIX programmers were too damn lazy to type "list" so they shortened it to "ls", etc. etc. etc. to the point where even I would forget lesser used commands sooner or later and I had them all memorized at one point because they're not always obvious they're shortened so darn much (if programmers learned to type fast, this never would have been an issue as better command names could have been used).
I could go on and on and on and on. NONE OF THAT CRAP matters ONE BIT with OS X. That's the sheer beauty of OS X. As "bad" as some of the GUI elements have gotten with the "flat" thing and other bugs and what not, compared to the hassles above, it's fracking PURE BLISS for a UNIX based system. Windows can't touch how easy it is to use and maintain OS X. Windows 10 just added the equivalent of Mission Control or rather "Spaces". OS X has had it in one form or another for a DECADE now. Windows couldn't boot from flash drives for the longest time (you might be a pirate, after all; we can't make life easy for you!); I remember the hassles XP was to try and restore from backups (I had to have a Linux boot CD-R because again, Windows didn't want me having any kind of bootable recovery disk and Linux was hit or miss back then whether it would actually succeed in booting enough to restore your system). For all the people whining about OS X messing up their computer on a major upgrade, just use freaking Carbon Copy Cloner and back the thing up to a bootable external USB, Thunderbolt or Firewire drive and you can EASILY revert to you previous OS or even work off the external drive (OS X doesn't care what drive you use or what disk and adapts readily to any change you make in that regard).
The problem is that OS X isn't adding neat features like those anymore so much. It's spending its time making things look/act different just to be different rather than increasing productivity and making life easier. Dumbing down the disk utility is a good example. Now if I want to set up a RAID drive combo, I have to use the Shell or boot off a USB recovery stick from an earlier OS version to get the old Disk Utility back (or hack it to use the old one). Ridiculous. That kind of crap should never have been put in OS X. I don't know who all the project managers are at Apple or if it's just Jony I've that doesn't give a crap about functionality, but they've definitely been screwing the pooch on things like that lately. I upgraded for "Metal" and I have YET to see a single damn application (or better yet a game) make use of it yet.
I compiled little Matrix code dropping dock apps and setup of a little docked app selector and it was all green and awesome looking, but the damn interface sucked to maintain (you really had to add every new app by hand in a freaking shell script to make it look right). I even wondered at one point what it would be like to have a modern computer running on the Internet with NO GUI, so I set up an alternate funky shell setup with multiple text-based tabs/screens and had the Lynx browser and some Pine-based email setup and I forget what the news reader was called I used (it's been like 12 years) and I had XChat and basically this whole freaking shell based "play" environment and congratulated myself on being one damn cool freaking Linux freak. The problem was that it wasn't that much fun surfing the web with a freaking text browser, but at at least back then it was doable for a lot of sites. Today, well....not so much.
Really, in the end, the problem is that it's a freaking hassle. Whether you want to do a major update and have to bork your entire application setup and reinstall it all afterwards (basically a clean install except your home directory and if you didn't create a separate partition for that when you first installed, it get borked too). A lot of programs don't have binaries compatible (in the where's it go sense among other things) with your particular distribution. You'll install and it and wonder, where the frack did it go to? Get out your shell again! Start checking /usr/local/bin instead of /usr/bin or vice-versa and don't expect it to add itself to your KDE menus if it's Gnome-based or vice-versa and don't expect it to appear in the right menu if your menu is customized (they all are from the old Mandrake/Mandriva to OpenSuse, etc.). it's just ALL OVER THE PLACE and that's why these guys will tell you to just get your applications from your distributions REPO (repository). The problem is that you are then dependent on SOMEONE ELSE setting up software packages that you might want to consider using. Anything outside that range...tough crap. You might even have to compile it yourself.
Sick of waiting for that "someone" to update Firefox to the newest version, too damn bad. Keep waiting or go find a way to install the official version yourself and expect it to appear where you don't want/expect it again (kind of nice that Mac applications almost always appear in the "Applications" directory and you can move them wherever you want easily as well without issue). I've seen things like Firefox 5 or 6 versions behind and that's when it's still maintained; when a MAJOR distribution upgrade occurs, sooner or later no one will BOTHER to update the older distributions repositories to newer Firefox or other software versions. They expect you to upgrade and yet they tell you if you don't want the major hassle of upgrading "major" updates and having to reinstall all your applications, then just pick a distribution that is slow to update or stick with an older version. They may have security updates for the older versions, but using some browser that is 20 versions behind and full of security holes isn't so great!
Want to compile yourself? If a developer library isn't where the package expects it to be (again, there's a lot of distributions that vary between usr and usr/local for starters), then you have to edit the makefiles and play other games. That might be part for the course for developers, but end users? Hey, don't be a noob! Spend your days memorizing odd/obscure acronyms because UNIX programmers were too damn lazy to type "list" so they shortened it to "ls", etc. etc. etc. to the point where even I would forget lesser used commands sooner or later and I had them all memorized at one point because they're not always obvious they're shortened so darn much (if programmers learned to type fast, this never would have been an issue as better command names could have been used).
I could go on and on and on and on. NONE OF THAT CRAP matters ONE BIT with OS X. That's the sheer beauty of OS X. As "bad" as some of the GUI elements have gotten with the "flat" thing and other bugs and what not, compared to the hassles above, it's fracking PURE BLISS for a UNIX based system. Windows can't touch how easy it is to use and maintain OS X. Windows 10 just added the equivalent of Mission Control or rather "Spaces". OS X has had it in one form or another for a DECADE now. Windows couldn't boot from flash drives for the longest time (you might be a pirate, after all; we can't make life easy for you!); I remember the hassles XP was to try and restore from backups (I had to have a Linux boot CD-R because again, Windows didn't want me having any kind of bootable recovery disk and Linux was hit or miss back then whether it would actually succeed in booting enough to restore your system). For all the people whining about OS X messing up their computer on a major upgrade, just use freaking Carbon Copy Cloner and back the thing up to a bootable external USB, Thunderbolt or Firewire drive and you can EASILY revert to you previous OS or even work off the external drive (OS X doesn't care what drive you use or what disk and adapts readily to any change you make in that regard).
The problem is that OS X isn't adding neat features like those anymore so much. It's spending its time making things look/act different just to be different rather than increasing productivity and making life easier. Dumbing down the disk utility is a good example. Now if I want to set up a RAID drive combo, I have to use the Shell or boot off a USB recovery stick from an earlier OS version to get the old Disk Utility back (or hack it to use the old one). Ridiculous. That kind of crap should never have been put in OS X. I don't know who all the project managers are at Apple or if it's just Jony I've that doesn't give a crap about functionality, but they've definitely been screwing the pooch on things like that lately. I upgraded for "Metal" and I have YET to see a single damn application (or better yet a game) make use of it yet.
You know all this OMG Linux sux stuff has nothing to do with the thread right nor does it have anything to do with the poster wanting Linux pre-installed. He or she is obviously more skilled than the people posting here and would like to buy a nice ultrabook knowing it will be compatible.
Actually if we're going to nitpick and complain, this thread is called "Lenovo, LG and HP Introduce MacBook Lookalikes at CES 2016".
Which is why I;m not sure why we went down the Linux rabbit hole? Poster wants this computer with Linux he can probably get it he just needs to call like always though having the Windows sticker is nice for resale. If he really wants a Linux laptop he should support people who support the community and buy a system76
They removed the microSD slot, removable battery and waterproofing! That's new for Samsung buyers! Also they added edge, which is useful for... um... many things...
I have to agree with that.
But again, my frustration comes from the fact that it is seemingly possible for Apple to deliver a machine that really does it all but instead ends up forcing its users to compromise between machines in their own lineup.
Who wouldn't want a Retina Air?
Hell, I'd love for them to update the 2012 13" cMBP THEY STILL SELL to 2015/16 specs! That would be the perfect machine for me now. When SSD prices drop and capacities go up, and if someone makes aftermarket drives for them, I'd consider the retina MBPs.
I wish they made weight, screen size and maybe port count the differentiator between machines, even if they were BTO only. In other words, don't JUST make ultrabooks (which even the retina MBP qualifies as).
Alas, this is a pipe dream, never to be fulfilled.