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Why would anyone buy a Retina Macbook Pro vs Dell XPS 15?
- Thread starter Starfyre
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That is exactly the question. And unfortunately a lot of businesses are tied to their platform by legacy software or hardware.
Nice to hear you work in a company that is so progressive. Not all are
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You're right. It's quite possible that Apple isn't sourcing the highest quality components, instead focusing on eliminating any hiccups or delays in their supply chain. It's also possible that Apple customers tend to have higher expectations, and are thus more likely to complain whenever they notice flaws in their machines.
Do you have a 15-inch model? How is your screen?
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Just wanted to quickly mention that I find LibreOffice an absolutely fantastic free and open-source alternative to MS Office on all platforms.
Hardware isn't the issue, drivers are
I've been sitting on the fence on whether to buy the Haswell rMBP or the Haswell XPS15.
Both have pros and cons.
I love the design and build quality of the rMBP, and I really like OSX.
However, I develop Windows software for a living, not OSX software.
And I do business software, which means I tend to run Windows Server 2012/2013, not Windows 7/8.
From what I understand a rMBP runs OSX brilliantly, but runs Windows 8.1 not so well (esp battery life) - and the reason for this is drivers.
Apple write all the drivers for OSX and they control the hardware so they can optimise them.
When you run Windows on a MBP, you have to use the Apple BootCamp drivers - which at this stage aren't very good (or at least, aren't that optimised) - so battery life drops dramatically compared to OSX.
Parallels Desktop does give me the option to have Windows on OSX, but for the kind of work I do I need all the power of running on the tin, not virtualised.
So that really leaves me with the XPS 15 - I've also had bad runs with Dell which makes me nervous.
So I'm likely to choose a Dell XPS 15 - not because it's the better computer, but because it'll run Windows better. If we could convince Apple to update their BootCamp drivers to support everything that OSX supports (I'm thinking hot-swappable ThunderBolt here, although the ball's probably in MSFTs camp) and also support a wide range of Windows OSs, then it'd make my decision easier.
I've been sitting on the fence on whether to buy the Haswell rMBP or the Haswell XPS15.
Both have pros and cons.
I love the design and build quality of the rMBP, and I really like OSX.
However, I develop Windows software for a living, not OSX software.
And I do business software, which means I tend to run Windows Server 2012/2013, not Windows 7/8.
From what I understand a rMBP runs OSX brilliantly, but runs Windows 8.1 not so well (esp battery life) - and the reason for this is drivers.
Apple write all the drivers for OSX and they control the hardware so they can optimise them.
When you run Windows on a MBP, you have to use the Apple BootCamp drivers - which at this stage aren't very good (or at least, aren't that optimised) - so battery life drops dramatically compared to OSX.
Parallels Desktop does give me the option to have Windows on OSX, but for the kind of work I do I need all the power of running on the tin, not virtualised.
So that really leaves me with the XPS 15 - I've also had bad runs with Dell which makes me nervous.
So I'm likely to choose a Dell XPS 15 - not because it's the better computer, but because it'll run Windows better. If we could convince Apple to update their BootCamp drivers to support everything that OSX supports (I'm thinking hot-swappable ThunderBolt here, although the ball's probably in MSFTs camp) and also support a wide range of Windows OSs, then it'd make my decision easier.
Looks like a solid machine but I'm a little weary of DELL for laptops.
I've been stuck with a DELL Studio XPS 16 for around 6 months now and it struggles to say the least, notoriously bad for overheating too.
Still performs alright from time-to-time considering it is 4 or 5 years old though.
I have a 15" Macbook Pro with Retina Display on it's way and should have it by the 14th - I can't wait to have a machine that doesn't choke with even the slightest thing.
DELL have been doing quite well lately though so who knows - it could possibly be a brilliant machine.
I've been stuck with a DELL Studio XPS 16 for around 6 months now and it struggles to say the least, notoriously bad for overheating too.
Still performs alright from time-to-time considering it is 4 or 5 years old though.
I have a 15" Macbook Pro with Retina Display on it's way and should have it by the 14th - I can't wait to have a machine that doesn't choke with even the slightest thing.
DELL have been doing quite well lately though so who knows - it could possibly be a brilliant machine.
I have a Dell XPS 8500 Desktop and it performs beautifully. I never had an issue with Dell. As for a laptop, I have the 2013 rMBP 15in and it also performs beautifully. I don't have a bad thing to say about either company. They are both in the business of making people happy and making sure they are focused on the coustomers satisfaction.
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The special BootCamp drivers are only for stuff like keyboard controls/audio/wifi etc., i.e. the drivers which you won't find elsewhere. The reason for short battery life is that Apple laptops do not use the integrated GPU with a Bootcamp installation - because a MBP is using a hardware video output multiplexer (as opposed to iGPU-only output on Optimus and similar platforms), proper support would require custom windows graphics drivers.
Bottomline - if you have a laptop without a dGPU, the battery life will not drop as much. It will still drop - but just because OS X power optimisations are more aggressive.
The main two reasons I buy Mac are because of the OS and build quality. It seems like a lot of windows machines now design their computers to resemble a MacBook Pro anyway. Nothing wrong with that, it's a great design.
Any reason you need to run natively? Running OSX as a host OS with VMWare Fusion and Windows VMs would allow you to switch between environments quickly, and most business servers are already virtualized anyways.
If you read further, you see he tells the reason.
"Parallels Desktop does give me the option to have Windows on OSX, but for the kind of work I do I need all the power of running on the tin, not virtualised."
Let's see...
- I don't even want a touch screen on my laptop (not only do I not use it, it invites people to actually touch my screen rather than pointing)
- The schizophrenic abomination known as Windows 8 (which I know you can get rid of)
- mSATA SSD instead of a PCIe (i.e slower)
- I prefer the Pro's 16:10 screen ratio over the Dell's 16:9 (as I work more with text than watch movies)
- The Pro has a faster integrated GPU (Dell has a HD4600 whilst the Pro has a HD5200, also known as Iris Pro)
- It's fairly obvious that Dell is trying to copy the Pro when you look at it and when their site talks about the frame being milled from a single piece of aluminum (something Apple kept going on about when the first unibody machines were introduced back in 2008).
Then the main one:
- It's a consumer model Dell. IT admins will tell you they infamous for really shoddy build quality and bad reliability. The top notch support that business models get is also not included with consumer models.
As for the battery life point, we're going by manufacturer estimates, not actual benchmark results. We know Apple tents be pretty honest (benchmarks often give better results than Apple's own figures) whilst other manufacturers, including Dell, tend to be less than honest.
- I don't even want a touch screen on my laptop (not only do I not use it, it invites people to actually touch my screen rather than pointing)
- The schizophrenic abomination known as Windows 8 (which I know you can get rid of)
- mSATA SSD instead of a PCIe (i.e slower)
- I prefer the Pro's 16:10 screen ratio over the Dell's 16:9 (as I work more with text than watch movies)
- The Pro has a faster integrated GPU (Dell has a HD4600 whilst the Pro has a HD5200, also known as Iris Pro)
- It's fairly obvious that Dell is trying to copy the Pro when you look at it and when their site talks about the frame being milled from a single piece of aluminum (something Apple kept going on about when the first unibody machines were introduced back in 2008).
Then the main one:
- It's a consumer model Dell. IT admins will tell you they infamous for really shoddy build quality and bad reliability. The top notch support that business models get is also not included with consumer models.
As for the battery life point, we're going by manufacturer estimates, not actual benchmark results. We know Apple tents be pretty honest (benchmarks often give better results than Apple's own figures) whilst other manufacturers, including Dell, tend to be less than honest.
Just a few things
Both versions with dGPUs have the 750m, so the GPU can be the same.
And it's actually from their precision line, they took their m3800 workstation and put in a 750m instead of k1100m
dell gave us the conditions of the battery test, 11 hours browsing lightly at 150nits with wifi on
Touchscreen and windows 8 are subjective, some love it some hate it
Like yea, it might be horrible, but it could be good, and it's getting way too much hate here.
Don't want to start a fight here. Let's just wait until it's widely available and then we can actually compare the 2
Just curious how is GPU switching botched with OS X? My rMBP switches perfectly and when I want it too...never had an issue with GPU switching. Could you explain?
I explained in other threads. It does fine when switching to the dGPU but not the other way.
Use an external screen or attach to a projector for presentations you always have to deal with the extra heat and loss of battery life. While you can force the intel GPU with gfxCardStatus you need to relaunch every app in the dependency list if you unplug the projector and want to go back to the Intel GPU for better battery life.
Apple switches not based on demand but based on very dumb framework triggers that require a lot of care form programmers to not trigger the dGPU when not needed. Ergo the dGPU gets active lots of times unnecessarily. I run Spotify in the background (it is just a music player) and the dGPU gets triggered because it is based on AIR (which is Flash). Even if Spotify is on pause and does nothing the dGPU stays active.
In Windows with Nvidia Optimus there is a driver in between the Intel and Nvidia driver that forwards everything to which ever GPU is active. Therefore programmers of applications don't need to care at all which API's to use or having to mandatorily code multiple code paths if they want to use some graphics accelerated APIs. In Windows if you alt+tab out of a game the dGPU can actually switch off (I think it doesn't per default but it could). Nvidia Optimus actually bothers to check whether a faster GPU is actually needed not just turns on in case. There are also options to manually select the behavior and select which GPU you want for which program. That would be a simple fix of some problems if Apple just allowed users to override the auto switching for apps the user says don't need a dGPU. But they don't even do that simple fix.
Apple only allows dGPU only or its broken auto switching. Only Apple's own apps do okay but if you use Chrome you need to force the Intel GPU or it always triggers the dGPU.
I find it also annoying that there is no way to boot Windows with the Intel GPU if a dGPU is present in the notebook. For Intel Quick Sync encoding jobs that would be so nice and there is no Intel Quick Sync Encoding anywhere other than Windows.
Use an external screen or attach to a projector for presentations you always have to deal with the extra heat and loss of battery life. While you can force the intel GPU with gfxCardStatus you need to relaunch every app in the dependency list if you unplug the projector and want to go back to the Intel GPU for better battery life.
Apple switches not based on demand but based on very dumb framework triggers that require a lot of care form programmers to not trigger the dGPU when not needed. Ergo the dGPU gets active lots of times unnecessarily. I run Spotify in the background (it is just a music player) and the dGPU gets triggered because it is based on AIR (which is Flash). Even if Spotify is on pause and does nothing the dGPU stays active.
In Windows with Nvidia Optimus there is a driver in between the Intel and Nvidia driver that forwards everything to which ever GPU is active. Therefore programmers of applications don't need to care at all which API's to use or having to mandatorily code multiple code paths if they want to use some graphics accelerated APIs. In Windows if you alt+tab out of a game the dGPU can actually switch off (I think it doesn't per default but it could). Nvidia Optimus actually bothers to check whether a faster GPU is actually needed not just turns on in case. There are also options to manually select the behavior and select which GPU you want for which program. That would be a simple fix of some problems if Apple just allowed users to override the auto switching for apps the user says don't need a dGPU. But they don't even do that simple fix.
Apple only allows dGPU only or its broken auto switching. Only Apple's own apps do okay but if you use Chrome you need to force the Intel GPU or it always triggers the dGPU.
I find it also annoying that there is no way to boot Windows with the Intel GPU if a dGPU is present in the notebook. For Intel Quick Sync encoding jobs that would be so nice and there is no Intel Quick Sync Encoding anywhere other than Windows.
I've read tons of complaints of yellow blotches on Dell's IPS desktop monitors, especially their equivalent of Apple's 27" Cinema Display.
As far as their laptops, consider that Dell only sells a relatively small number of "premium" laptops compared to Apple, whose entire line is "premium" aside from the Air. No one complains when their $500 laptop has some color variance, but at higher price points you definitely will. I could also point out that Apple basically asked for this with their marketing, that Apple's customers are generally more focused on visual appeal, etc.
The higher resolution panels, which Dell only started offering just recently, are almost certainly partially responsible for what we're seeing (edit: On the rMBPs; obviously very few have seen the new Dell panels yet). IPS has always been prone to these variances, but the problem is going to be worse when you build higher resolution panels at higher densities because the yields are going to be much lower. To hit decent yields (and keep the panels from being crazy expensive) you'll have to end up keeping more panels with color variances. This should get better over time now that high pixel density has become the new standard.
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Never said that they didn't have the same discrete GPU. The faster integrated one does means that you can get better performance when you also want to conserve your battery.
I wouldn't be so sure about that considering the Precision line uses a different case, had different IO in different places, a different screen and that's probably not even half the differences. Sure, they may have recycled part of the motherboard, but the motherboard is not the only component that can go wrong. Also, the Dell consumer level support that you're going to get is also pretty infamous.spybenj said:
Which doesn't really explain why it would have 3 hours over the 15" rMBP when it's got almost exactly the same components. What makes it even more weird is that Apple machines tend to have better batterylife than Windows machines with literally the same parts.spybenj said:
You're the ones who are trying to "start a fight" by posting a "Why would you buy product X when there's product Y" on a board full of fanboys for the manufacturer of product X. It's like going to a Hell's Angels club house and asking them why they'd buy a Harley Davidson when they could buy a Yamaha.spybenj said:
I'd never buy a Dell again. We used to have them before I retired and they were always causing problems.
So I think the real issue going on here (well, it's the issue for me) is that I would probably prefer the rMBP over the Dell - I prefer Apple's build quality, I like the resale value, and I've definitely been swayed by Apple's marketing and the general coolness factor.
However, there's no point me spending over US$2000 on a laptop that I can't do my day-to-day job on!!
At the end of the day, the rMBP are machines designed to run OSX.
Anyone on here who is comparing the rMBP to a Dell (or any other non-Apple laptop) must be a user who predominantly uses Windows (or who is looking to make the switch to OSX).
I use Windows for my work: period. For my non-work stuff, I'd probably be just as happy on OSX. And if you're posting on here, and not already a rMBP owner, it has to be because you'd quite like a rMBP and need some convincing. Either that or you're just like trolling
[As an aside, has anyone properly addressed the apparent discrepancy between the rMBP power supply size (85w) vs the draw on a fully loaded rMBP with the dGPU? I saw some calculations that showed under load the rMBP would draw quite a bit more than 85w, so that you'd then expect throttling, and that the Dell XPS doesn't suffer from that issue as it has 135W power supply? I didn't see a satisfactory answer on that, just some mud-slinging].
So really, the question for me is simple: If a rMBP can run Windows as well as (or better than) the corresponding Dell/Sony/Lenovo etc. laptop, then I'm sold.
And the fact that we're arguing over components, screen size, battery life etc. indicates that it's not that simple a choice.
If the rMBP had a touch screen, I'd be sold - I do a lot of Mobile App dev, and one of the pluses of a touchscreen is running an emulator that uses a touchscreen - but it's not something I'd use all the time, it's a nice to have (for me - I know others dislike them). I don't have a tablet so I'd be using the laptop like one. Or I could just buy a rMBP and an iPad air...
.I also much prefer the Apple touchpad over the Dell ones, but only if Apple's drivers work properly in all the OSs I need to use (just about to do some searching: can I run Windows Server 2008/2012 and 2013 booting from VHD [non-virtualised] on a rMBP).
I have a white carbonate 7 yo MacBook which (although slow, and with some bits of cracked plastic) still works fine.
I also have a 3 yo Dell laptop which doesn't always boot, is cracked, has the occasional pink screen, doesn't go to sleep, and is very very slow.
Based on build quality alone, the decision is a no-brainer.
Apple's products have a whole mystique, and aura around them - and for some that's a put off as it's primarily a marketing thing (IMHO), however I'm still swayed by it.
I want the feeling of owning a MacBook, I want the near-religious experience of unpackaging it and admiring how much thought has gone into every part.
I just don't want to find I can't do my day job on it!