Tag: mac book pro

That Was Fun, Done With The Lenovo Carbon X1, Back to GSD!

Over the last couple of months I’ve been double laptoping it. I’ve had a Lenovo Carbon X1 with Windows 8 and Ubuntu dual boot configuration with 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD and i7 and I had a Mac Book Air (MBA) 8GB, 512GB SSD and i7 Proc. The MBA was my primary work machine with the Lenovo being a secondary machine that I was using to test and build Windows 8 Applications and for building native Linux services and related code work.

Windows 8 Critique

Simply, Windows 8 is one of the most broken operating systems I’ve used since Windows ME. Forget Vista, I consider it officially dethroned. Let me clarify what is and isn’t horrible about Windows 8 though. It isn’t that it technically is a bad operating system, it’s that the idea and approach that Microsoft has taken is inherently flawed at several key points.

First, having a desktop on a tablet, which is almost impossible except for all but the finest of finger pointing tablet users, is blindingly stupid. Just go into any place where there is a Windows 8 tablet user and watch them whacking away when they get into the desktop.

The Windows 8 desktop on a tablet is patently absurd for the vast majority of potential Windows 8 users.

However, the straight Metro Interface of Windows 8 (which Microsoft now calls the Windows 8 interface because of legal reasons) is magnificent for tablet usage. There are a few major things that need fixed: responsiveness related to connection state, update status and the availability of high quality applications. Once those things are fixed Windows 8 will be as competent as iOS or Android in the usability department. Until then, it’s a nice dream, with a small number of usable apps with a huge potential.

Now the desktop is the tried and true classic desktop of Windows. Thus, when you’re on a desktop machine or a laptop with a dedicated pointing device or touch screen the back and forth is fine. Matter of fact it is great! I find myself using the touch screen regularly to do a number of tasks, and hope to see its use increase more and more on a number of platforms (yo Apple, got game on this yet or not, OS-X can definitely use a touch interface).

Overall though, Windows 8 – unless you solely do Windows 8 Development, is not a reason to buy a Lenovo X1 Carbon.

Ubuntu Critique

Minus the touch screen, which Ubuntu has no clue what to do with except treat it like a pointer, this is how you see the real power and beauty of the Lenovo X1 Carbon. Ubuntu loads 2x faster and shuts down 2x faster than Windows 8. Comparable builds in IntelliJ, C, C++, Erlang and other compilers are regularly 1.2-3x faster than on Windows. The servers that one would build against, such as GlassFish (see this for my latest on setting up GlassFish & Java 7) are also routinely faster, more responsive and less prone to difficulty than in Windows.

One of the problems that is ongoing, is it is hard to move to Ubuntu unless you are doing dev. Using Adobe tools is a non-starter, best to stick to slow Windows or get real fast using OS-X. Again though, if it runs on Windows and Linux, I’d take a safe guess that the Linux versions will be faster, probably more stable, and all around it’ll likely work better over time. There is something to that whole unix way about building things. One other big booster for Ubuntu, is writing JavaScript, which I do regularly these days is a much better experience than on Windows. I use standard tools, that usually are available on Windows, but launching Sublime 2 or WebStorm is just faster, noticeably, on Linux versus Windows 8 (or whatever version really).

So overall, if you’re going to get a Linux machine, the Lenovo X1 Carbon is a prime choice. If not one of the best. If I understand correctly, there may even be some solid Linux software out there that would make the touch screen more usable too. So if you’re adventurous you may be able to solve that one single issue that I had with Linux running on the X1.

Would I Give Up My Mac for the X1?

This is easy, the answer is absurdly simple. However I did give up the Mac Book Air I had in parallel with the Lenovo for several months, as it belonged to Basho (which I’ve departed from).

Hell no!!!

Matter of fact, even though I’ve used the laptop extensively with Ubuntu and Windows 8, I’ve just bought a new Mac Book Pro Retina 15″ to do all of my work with Ubuntu, Windows 8 and OS-X. The solidness of the MBP is untouchable compared to the X1. The screen is better, the keyboard is more consistent and easier to type on, the ghost tracking of the track pad is non-existent on the air, versus the X1 Carbon. In this case, I’d even turned off the trackpad entirely on the X1 Carbon. Simply, the X1 Carbon just doesn’t measure up to the Mac Book Pro.

Other observations I’ve made about the two machines. The Mac Book Pro is far more solid, the construction is just not even comparable. The X1 feels solid but compared to the MBP it feels cheap and flimsy. Considering the hardware works flawlessly with the software on the MBP is also no competition. The Carbon regularly needed driver updates, things would flake out and I’d have to restart. This would be prevalent in windows or linux, it didn’t matter. Fortunately a restart would fix it, but none of these issues exist on the MBP, using either OS-X or running a VM with Windows 8 or Ubuntu.

Also, even though the MBP design is over a year old now, the i7, 16 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD makes the X1 Carbon seem like a morbidly out of date, slow and antiquated device even though it is actually a newer device!

So, would I give up my mac for the X1?

Mac Battles, The Personal Day to Day of Software Development and Morale

I’ve been using a Mac for a couple of months now. My employer purchased a few for us coders to try out, and I’ve become spoiled. I rarely want to use my other machines now, as they seem cumbersome and inefficient. Mainly from a hardware perspective, as the OS itself seems to have plusses and minuses versus Windows 7. But slowly I’m becoming easily as productive, and more, on OS-X as I was on Windows 7. The biggest thing is, OS-X seems to just work the vast majority of the time. In addition, I can dig into parts of it that seem impossible on Windows. In addition, I have almost the entire Unix Ecosystem to play with, which dwarfs the Microsoft Windows Ecosystem by greater proportions than I ever realized. The biggest thing I like about the Mac however boils down to two things:

  1. The Hardware – Simply, the hardware is superb. There is nothing else like it on the market. The single molded body, the touchpad, the keys, everything works better than any laptop I’ve ever used. I’m not saying that as someone that’s used one or two laptops either, I’ve literally used dozens upon dozens of laptops over the years. I regularly try out new ones, and nothing comes close.
  2. The platform OS-X/Linux – Sometimes it may seem like they’re underpowered, this is often a complaint I’ve heard. But considering the efficiencies that OS-X/Unix/FreeBSD/Linux provides, a 4 GB Machine with a simple spindle drive compared to an 8 GB Machine with an SSD running Windows 7 will often perform much better. I have as well as others have benchmarked the Mac Book Pro against multiple Dell Machines, and I’ve seen it done with others, and simply – the operating system gives the Mac an advantage. My suggestion to Microsoft – drop windows and just start building a nice UI on top of a Unix variant like FreeBSD or Linux. It’ll serve Microsoft AND the community better.

I’ll admit, I have installed (not that I currently have it installed) Ubuntu and Windows 7 on the Mac Book Pro (MBP) and windows runs ok, albeit it kills some battery life. Ubuntu runs great, it appears as well as OS-X itself. But even with the others, I’ve primarily just stayed put with OS-X at this juncture. It serves its purpose. In the future, when I purchase a MBP of my own, or even a Mac Air, I will likely run Ubuntu and OS-X on the machine. Setup for Ruby on Rails and lots of JavaScript development.

I know after using this machine, that by the end of the year I will be primarily using Ubuntu and OS-X for almost everything I’m doing – including most likely .NET Development. I however still get the strong feeling that I’ll have a Win7 Machine Floating about and readily available.

As for my morale, it is super high these days building software! A passion indeed. In the future, I’m suspecting about 6-8 months, I’ll have a few announcements regarding improving morale. Until then, cheers!  🙂