MacRant: was waiting for a new macbook pro release for awhile to upgrade by old laptop (not mac). Watched the release, had very mixed feeling about it, but still ordered (clinching my teeth and saying sorry to my wallet). Next day looked into alternatives, cacelled the orded to have more time to think, now deciding... I mean cmon, no latest 7th gen processor, no 32gb memory option, 2gb video is ok for non gaming, the whole "big" thing is TouchBar that I DON'T F* NEED. They should drop the "Pro" and name it "Fancy Strip".

So I looked into alternatives, and Dell XPS 15 with maxed spect is twice as juicier, and has not a touch bar, but the whole touch freakin 4k screen, for the less price :/
Just wanted to rant about the new macbook's spec and price and see what you all think of macbook vs alternatives?

I think you made the right choice. For development, it's all about RAM, disk speed and CPU.

Who needs touch bars....

I have the XPS and love it! :)

@itsdaniel0 thanks, it's good to hear you're happy with it. I went to MS store today to actually touch it, and I have to say, it's really slim and solid. I really liked the keyboard, it just feels so good to type. Probably gonna go for it. If you don't mind asking, what spec did you go for? I know now that 256 ssd is slower, so it's better to go 512gb just for the speed.

@onebit0fme Mines a company laptop, so I went for the 512 SSD. 4K screen. There are some issues with 4K on Windows, especially if your external display is a non-4k. I wouldn't call them show-stoppers though. You'll just find that somewhere, there's a program which hasn't updated.

I am finding it hard to find an M2 SSD upgrade for a 1TB drive :(

C'mon Dell. Just release XPS15 in my country already. My current 5-yo laptop (not MacBook) is holding just fine but i need a replacement in 2 years.

The touchpad on the MacBook Pro whith multi-touch and gestures enabled is for me the main sellingpoint and well worth the money. All those Windows and Linux OEMs and those shitty drivers... sigh... I just wished they had the same keyboard-layout as the rest, I mean c'mon the usability and ergonometry focus they have on their deviced did not make it into their keyboard-layout. Fuck cmd+c vs ctrl+c...

I did the exact same thing with the 13, I hope dell accounted for apples disappointment and have enough stock

@Sauruz the XPS 13 developer edition comes with Ubuntu, there are plenty of desktop environments but I personally prefer GNOME. I made the switch a while ago and love it, the only reason I still switch to windows is games.

Same for me, when I first heard about the features of the MBP I liked it.

But then I realized I could buy an i7 XPS 13 with 16GB Ram and 512GB SSD for the price of the cheapest Macbook Pro variant. Ridiculous.

@manbearpigcode @Sauruz: I get the frustration switching from macOS to Windows, not a huge fan of Windows as well. But I try to be a realist here when it comes to choosing a hardware, and it comes to overpriced average but "mac" experience or good specs and "figure it out youself" experience. Would I use Windows as my dev environment? Hell NO! I'd install Ubuntu as I do it now, or at least run it in a VBox. And if I want macOS, there's Hachintosh to the rescue (in case you need xcode to publish iOS app or something, did it once through VBox :). So for me the specs play dominant role here. For work I have macbook pro 13, and throughout the day I run at about 12-13gb (out of 16) in memory, it get's quite laggy at times when I have a vagrant VBox, a bunch of Pycharm projects opened and God forbid opening too many Chrome tabs. I guess dual-core also contributes to it. So not having that 32gb option spoils the whole idea of getting a new modern "professional" laptop.

@Hakash I agree, the touchpad is easy to get used to, and it get's bigger and with feedback this time, this one is pretty cool. For what it worth, the XPS comes as close as it can to multitouch experience, but it's not as big :(

@onebit0fme so there is finally coming gear for the other major OSes thats actually nice to use away from the desk? About time. How the sensitivity, the touch-and-feel and such on the XPS?

Update: so I went to lay my hands on Dell XPS (again), and I've convinced myself it is the one, but I'm gonna wait... So the consultants at MS store don't really know what they sell, I've asked if they have XPS 15 with PCIe SSD, and 2 of them didn't know what that is :/ The third one (pretty girl) finally was able to answer my question, and they don't have it (but Dell does). But the best part, she told me they already have XPS 13 featuring 7th gen Intel i7 (eat this macbook), just not on display. Thank you, pretty girl. So I'm gonna wait for 15 inch model to do the same, and of course I'm gonna look for PCIe SSD (obviously), probably at the cost of less capacity (those things are expensive).

@Hakash it's pretty good, not "mac"-good, but decent. It does support multitouch, gestures are good and responsive. Sensitivity is decent, not as presise, but usable. The only thing, I wish it'd be bigger, my dragging had to be fast to drag things around the 4k display :)

@onebit0fme Cool! Thanks for the update! 👍🏻