Ruby on Rails

Really, the *only* reason i have a mbp right now is because of the
incredible screen. There are reasons I *don't* like the mac but most
of them are easily surmountable. But with machines like asus's
zenbooks, toshiba's kirabook and such coming in with incredible
displays, today i'd have made a different choice.

Macs are nice for a lot of little things, and they are very good
development environments, but a nice linux distro on a kirabook would
also be really slick. The most important thing for a development
machine is memory, I'd say minimum 8GB to be able to run VMs and still
keep everything else running happily.

On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 7:34 PM, Yin Wang <yinwang0@gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe I should say buy an old macbook instead a new one because it's the new
> ones that freeze. There are long complaint threads on Apple's site since it
> was released:
>
> https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5481839
> http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5296
> http://www.macrumors.com/2013/11/07/apple-releases-fix-for-13-inch-retina-macbook-pro-keyboardtrackpad-issues
> http://notebooks.com/2013/10/31/apple-promising-to-fix-freezes-on-13-inch-macbook-pro
>
> Believe me it's still not the end. After the EFI update, the laptop fails to
> lock the screen randomly, and recently started to crash, more deadly - total
> crashes, the screen will not turn off even if I close the lid. Worse, it
> leaves no report on the system log... Other people reported the same problem
> on the first thread.
>
> But maybe I digressed too much here, but PCs with Linux should work well for
> any programming tasks.
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, February 25, 2014 4:05:35 PM UTC-8, Lei Zhao wrote:
>>
>> Just to add a few more data points here: I've had five Macs and none of
>> them had crashed more than three times. I used to own a top model of
>> ThinkPad and its motherboard died within six months. So, there can be some
>> luck involved and you ended up getting a defective unit, but a single data
>> point is not sufficient to say their overall reliability is bad.
>>
>> To answer Jason's questions, OS X has changed a lot over recent versions,
>> especially Lion and Mountain Lion. But most of the major changes are
>> UI-related, like natural scrolling, mission control, etc. Missing them could
>> affect your productivity but shouldn't prevent you from doing programming
>> tasks. However, I won't recommend an used Mac if it's so overpriced. 50% of
>> the original price for a three year old is reasonable, but I wouldn't pay
>> any more than that. If you don't have budget for a new one, and you can't
>> find an used one, just keep using your Linux box. It might not be as
>> comfortable but wouldn't prevent you from doing anything.
>>
>> Lei
>>
>> On Tuesday, February 25, 2014 at 5:18 PM, Yin Wang wrote:
>>
>> I would suggest a new PC instead of an old Mac if the prices are similar.
>> Macs are good looking but not really that good in terms of reliability. My
>> new macbook pro 13" retina display and Haswell processor crashes badly.
>> Everybody was affected for late 2013 model. Apple released a firmware fix
>> but it's still not really fixed. Now it comes to a deadly stop once per a
>> day or two! Apple is quite loose these days for its quality control. A day's
>> using it would have discovered the problem. I have no idea how they could
>> have released these defective products.
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, February 25, 2014 2:00:14 PM UTC-8, Jason Hsu, Rubyist wrote:
>>
>> I realize this is off-topic, but I understand that an overwhelming
>> majority of Rubyists use Mac computers and not PCs. I currently use
>> Linux-powered PCs. Yes, I ditched Windows years ago just like many of you.
>> Using Linux on a used PC is the cheapest way to compute. (I've been able to
>> buy a 4 or 5-year-old PC that works for as little as $40-$50.)
>>
>> I'm interested in purchasing a Mac to put myself on the same page as other
>> software developers. (I'm used to Linux distros that provide the look and
>> feel of Windows XP.) I will use the Mac for software development projects,
>> but I intend to stick with my Linux-powered PCs for general computing. (I
>> don't want to get locked into the Mac world, because it's so much more
>> expensive. Also, there is a case to be made for being versatile.)
>>
>> I'm thinking of buying a new mini (starts at $600), a new MacBook (starts
>> at $1000), or a refurbished MacBook (starts at $850).
>>
>> Some questions:
>> 1. How much has OS X changed over the past several versions? Is something
>> from 5 years ago obsolete? Linux, on the other hand, is free. Any current
>> Linux distro will work very well on a 5-year-old PC, and there are even some
>> Linux distros (like Puppy Linux and antiX Linux) that work well on PCs that
>> are 10 or more years old.
>> 2. Is it just me, or are used Macs so exorbitantly expensive as to defeat
>> the point of buying a used computer in the first place? I looked at
>> Craigslist and found a number of used Mac laptops selling for as much as a
>> new one. Most of the Macs selling for a few hundred dollars or less were
>> very old, such as G4s. (I understand that those are 10-15 years old. Good
>> luck getting even $100 or even $50 from a 10-year-old PC.)
>>
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